Chinese manufacturing firm SANY Group is set to supply electrolysers and hydrogen refuelling equipment to an unnamed Australian customer.
Including a set of skid-mount PEM electrolysers and balance of plant (COP) equipment, 35/70MPa skiD-mounted refuelling equipment and a set of insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) power control systems, the order represents the company’s first international venture into international markets with its hydrogen technology.
The refuelling equipment is expected to primarily serve “industrial vehicles.”
From SANY’s website, it offers hydrogen refuelling stations with a production capacity of 200-2,000Nm3/h, refuelling capacity of 500-2,000kg per day and storage capacity of 580-1,000kg.
According to SANY, the unnamed customer said, “We see this as a benchmark project that we can replicate and promote in other markets.”
The company has not disclosed the location of the planned project or whether it will carry out the installation. H2 View has reached out for confirmation.
It comes after SANY started the testing of its hydrogen production and refuelling complex in Changsha, China, in March this year (2024).
Read more: SANY sets out hydrogen roadmap in China
Equipped with a production capacity of at least two tonnes of hydrogen per day, the station is said to serve four vehicles simultaneously.
At the end of last year (2023), the Chinese company launched what it called the “world’s largest” single hydrogen electrolyser, with 3,000Nm3/h production capacity.
Sinopec aims high with HRS
State-owned enterprises (SOE) are a unique product of China’s political economy. SOEs must respond to business stimuli to stay profitable but are also held accountable for implementing political goals.
The hydrogen and fuel cell industry in China was dominated by private companies during the Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) Golden Age, from 2017 to 2019. During that period, even in sectors such as hydrogen refuelling station (HRS) construction, where the economies of scale and engineering background of SOEs would have helped development, private firms predominated.
This situation changed suddenly with the release in March 2022 of the Mid- to Long-Term Hydrogen Industry Development Goals, a document that can be understood as China’s national hydrogen strategy.
With the publication of the Hydrogen Industry Development Goals, large SOEs like China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), that had been observing the industry at a distance but were too cautious to make business decisions, now had a political reason to invest in China’s growing hydrogen industry.
Sinopec quickly established the subsidiary New Star Hydrogen and announced a number of green hydrogen generation projects…
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