Omniverse accelerates wind power into clean hydrogen fuel
The Gigastack project aims to showcase how green energy can be woven into complex, industrial energy infrastructure on a massive scale and accelerate net-zero emissions progress.
NVIDIA Omniverse 3D design collaboration and simulation to help engineers work together on an ambitious effort to turn wind power into green hydrogen fuel.
Engineers are using the NVIDIA Omniverse 3D simulation platform as part of a proof of concept that promises to become a model for putting green energy to work worldwide.
Gigastack’s pilot project, led by a consortium that includes Phillips 66 and Denmark-based renewable energy company Orsted, will create low-emission fuel for the energy company’s Humber refinery in England.
Hydrogen is expected to play a critical role as the world moves to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels over the coming years. The market for hydrogen fuel is predicted to grow over 45x to $90 billion by 2030, up from $1.8 billion today.
To make that happen, new kinds of collaboration are vital, explained Ahsan Yousufzai, global head of business development for energy surface at NVIDIA, during a conversation about the project in an on-demand panel discussion at NVIDIA GTC.
The system — now in the planning stages — will draw power from Ørsted’s massive Hornsea 1,218-megawatt offshore wind farm, the largest in the world upon its completion in January last year.
Hornsea will be connected to ITM Power’s Gigastack electrolyzer facility, which will use electrolysis to turn water into clean, renewable hydrogen fuel.
That fuel, in turn, will be put to work at Phillips 66’s Humber refinery, decarbonizing one of the UK’s largest industrial facilities.
The project is unique because of its scale — with plans to eventually ramp up Gigastack into a massive 1-gigawatt electrolyzer system — and because of its potential to become a blueprint for deploying electrolyzer technology for wider decarbonization.
Weaving all these elements together, however, requires tight collaboration between team members from Element Energy, ITM Power, Ørsted, Phillips 66 and Worley.
Worley relied on AspenTech’s OptiPlant to develop a 3D conceptual layout of the Gigastack green hydrogen project. The industrial optimization software combines decades of process modeling expertise with cutting-edge AI and machine learning.
