Hyundai Oilbank and Haldor Topsoe to develop hydrogen solutions

Hyundai Oilbank (a subsidiary of Hyundai Heavy Industries Group) and Haldor Topsoe have signed an MoU to jointly identify blue and green hydrogen opportunities, waste plastic recycling, and bio-refinery efuels, CCUS and other solutions to reduce carbon emissions.

The two companies will prioritise R&D cooperation on e-fuel, which is made by electrolysing water to obtain hydrogen and mixing it with carbon dioxide.

Hyundai Oilbank has started a transformation of its production to reduce carbon emissions in its customer offerings significantly.

In August this year, Hyundai Oilbank announced to have entered the hydrogen value chain by promoting the hydrogen fuel cell business for automobiles. It announced to build a hydrogen fuel cell separator production facility this year. Recently, it has built a high-purity hydrogen purification facility for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the Daesan plant in Seosan-si, Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea.

Since last year, Hyundai Oilbank has been conducting research on hydrogen fuel cells for automobiles, centring on the Central Research Institute. The company confirmed its entry into the business earlier this year and has been building a separator production facility as the first phase. It plans to complete the construction and test operation of the separator production facility this year, conduct a demonstration test jointly with a domestic automaker next year, and begin mass production in 2023.

The second phase plans to contribute to the localisation of parts by expanding the business to electrolyte membranes from next year. In the long term, it will also consider entering into the unit cell business encompassing the overall hydrogen fuel cell for automobiles, such as gas diffusion layer and electrode separator, and the fuel cell system business for buildings and heavy equipment.

Hyundai Oilbank is also accelerating the production of high-purity hydrogen fuel, which is essential for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.