City factory will make green fuel

ITM Power, the UK company whose Sheffield-based researchers are developing cutting edge technology for replacing fossil fuels with 'renewable' hydrogen gas, says work has begun on its first manufacturing plant and it has recruited a production manager to run the plant.

The company is currently finalising the layout of the plant and the pre-production prototypes for three different capacities of 'electrolyser,' which will split water into hydrogen and oxygen for use in conventional engines and fuel cells.

Chief executive Jim Heathcote says the plant will initially make three products:

1kW electrolyser capable of producing enough hydrogen for use as a secondary fuel, improving combustion and reducing emissions and fuel consumption in diesel powered vehicles, including commercial buses.

10kW device that could produce enough gas overnight to take you to work and back and then go shopping in a hydrogen-powered car or to fuel your domestic central heating and a gas cooker.

100kW device which could produce enough hydrogen to fuel a bus, a refuelling station or an internal combustion generator, to supplement electricity supplies.

Off peak electricity generated at night by nuclear power stations, which have to keep running even when there is no demand, or electricity from wind turbines and other 'green' sources will be used to run the electrolysers and, when the hydrogen is burnt or used to power a fuel cell, it will recombine with oxygen to form water again.

"We expect production to begin in the first half of next year," said Mr Heathcote. "We are moving bery fast - tryring to do five years' work in one year. NNot only are we designing the electrolysers that will be coming off the production line, but we are also designing and building a type of factory whic no one has ever built before."

Mr Heathcote says the factory has to be very flexible as it has to make products for a market that doesn't yet exist because, although electrolysis has been around for more than two centuries, it has not been economically viable to use electrolysers to generate hydrogen for use as a fuel in the past.

"We are in a very similar position to James Watt, when he invented the steam engine," said Mr Heathcote.

"He had great trouble selling the first two, but as soon as people saw them and realised what they could do, he could not make enough of them. We are gearing up our staffing to go with demand and if we are successful there could be large numbers of jobs created over the next three years."

ITM is still at the stage where it is funding investment rather than generating returns, but Jim Heathcote says the company has 31.8 million on its balance sheet. That is enough to fund the firm's plans for the next five years, without taking into account the fact that the company will be commercialising its technological breakthroughs over the next 12 to 18 months.