AFC Energy Purchases Hydrogen From Chlorine Manufacturer

AFC Energy, based in Surrey, England, announced today plans to utilise byproducts from chlorine to harness a new form of renewable energy. The energy company signed an agreement with Ineos ChlorVinyl, a European chemicals producer, to have them supply byproducts from their chlorine production. 

Ineos ChlorVinyl, based in Southampton, England, will save the leftover hydrogen produced when manufacturing chlorine, and then supply them to AFC Energy which plans to use the excess hydrogen to power their fuel cells. The fuel cells will then be installed at Ineos ChlorVinyl’s manufacturing plant in Cheshire, UK to help power the facility.

Details for the project remain undisclosed, including amount of energy expected to be generated, length or monetary value of the contract, as well as times and dates for the projects completion. 

In June, AFC gave a demonstration of their new fuel cell system which utilised hydrogen produced at a Akzo Nobel facility in Germany. AFC announced the need for this type of energy production, stating that the production of chlorine uses 1% of the world’s overall energy.

The site for the project, Ineos’ Cheshire, UK based production facility requires 500 MW of electricity to operate, and Ineos hd previously announced in April that it had raised funding of up to £400 million ($656 million) to install a waste-energy conversion system at the plant that would help harness up to 100 MW of the required energy consumption for the facility.

AFC Energy also has a contract with Waste2Tricity, in which the company supplies their fuel cells to the waste conversion plant to help conserve energy usage. Waste2tricity’s conversion facility is 60% powered by AFC’s fuel cells.