In a brand new episode of Bodenxt Talks, we put the spotlight on hydrogen. The production of the gas will be crucial in the process of creating green steel at Boden Industrial Park, and very large amounts of hydrogen are to be produced.
Guests in the studio are Kajsa Ryttberg-Wallgren, Head of Business Unit Hydrogen at H2 Green Steel and Håkan Nordin, business developer at Boden Business Agency.
Large amounts of hydrogen are an integral part of H2 Green Steel’s operations. Simplified, Kajsa Ryttberg-Wallgren describes how hydrogen creates water as an emission instead of carbon dioxide.
– In the iron ore there is oxygen and you want to get rid of it. Then you can fire with a lot of coke, or charcoal, to simply get the charcoal to pair with the oxygen. Then CO2 is created as an emission and you get iron. If you instead use hydrogen to do this – two hydrogen atoms, H2 – and connect to the oxygen in the iron ore, it becomes H20.
Hydrogen production means that we get expertise in Boden that we have not had before, and which is not found in many places in the world. A hope from Boden Business Agency is to be able to continue working with more players in the area, with different areas of use.
– The dimension of this facility make it world-unique, which of course also automatically sells to the world – “what is happening up north?”, And in Boden specifically. That’s how we build on what I think is just as exciting. How we as a municipality or region can develop the opportunity we now have, says Håkan Nordin.
One of the most common questions about hydrogen production is about safety. Kajsa Ryttberg-Wallgren describes the probability of a hydrogen explosion as very, very low and that they have safety as their first priority at all stages.
– The big risk can be said to be the hydrogen storage. We have limited it, we only have a couple of hours of storage so it is small. Then it must not be closer than 275 meters from the switchgear or accommodation. We have 400 meters to the switchgear, 600 meters to the nearest accommodation and 1.7 kilometers to Norra Svartbyn. I understand that you can feel worried, but we have done everything we can to be within the existing rules by a margin.
