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USP will have two green hydrogen plants developed alongside large companies such as Shell, Hytron and Raízen. The objective is to develop technologies that contribute to the transport of fuel.
This Thursday (1), the University of São Paulo (USP) announced a partnership with companies in the fuel sector to develop a technology capable of transforming ethanol into green hydrogen, energy considered sustainable due to its low carbon footprint. The cooperation agreement was signed with Shell Brasil, Hytron, Raízen and CETIQT. The agreement provides for the installation of two units on the USP campus for the production of green hydrogen, which will be applied and tested on a bus at Cidade Universitária.
Shell and Raízen invest in green hydrogen
With operations scheduled to start in the first half of next year, the initiative plans to make a low-carbon solution viable for heavy transport and polluting industries, in addition to inaugurating the first green hydrogen based on ethanol from Brazil and the world.
Faced with global pressure for solutions to the climate crisis, green hydrogen has been gaining prominence due to its great potential to decarbonize sectors such as steel, chemicals and electricity generation itself.
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However, transporting this fuel is still difficult, given that it requires storage at low temperatures and high pressure, making logistics difficult. Furthermore, manufacturing technologies are still not fully strengthened, explaining the interest of several companies in this new market.
Shell, for example, is investing BRL 50 million in this project with research and development resources, regulated by the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels. In May of this year, Shell had already closed an agreement for the construction of a pgreen hydrogen lantern in Porto do Açu (RJ).
Expectations for the development of the green hydrogen project
According to Alexandre Breda, manager of low carbon technology at Shell Brasil, the purpose of the agreement with USP is to position ethanol as a source of green hydrogen. The project aims to develop equipment called a reformer, responsible for breaking down the biofuel molecule to transform it into hydrogen.
Hytron, a company from the interior of São Paulo that is part of the partnership, already has a prototype of the device, but the technology still needs to be improved in order to guarantee reliability, efficiency and scalability to the process. The reformer will be installed at USP, which will also have a green hydrogen fueling station.
The aim, at the end of the project, is to create a solution capable of avoiding the challenges of producing, storing and transporting green hydrogen. According to Breda, every filling station in Brazil has ethanol. Therefore, instead of transporting the hydrogen, it would be possible to place this reformer inside the station so that the fuel can be produced locally. Therefore, the development with Shell, Raízen and USP will already be done in a container, to make the future installation distributed.
Raízen will supply biofuel to the project
The biofuel used by USP's factories in the process will be supplied by Raízen, the largest sugarcane ethanol producer in the world. According to Ricardo Mussa, Raízen's CEO, the long-term goal is to reach such a high level of technology that the reformer can be installed not only at service stations but also in the electric cars themselves.
According to the executive of root, at the limit, the goal is to be able to transform ethanol into hydrogen inside the car or bus itself, if the equipment is compact enough.
