Leigh Creek Energy says in 2020 it can produce huge amount of hydrogen cheaply at former coal mine site
Leigh Creek Energy’s pre-commercial demonstration plant 550km north of Adelaide.
Adelaide-based Leigh Creek Energy said in 2020 it could produce 200 million kilograms of hydrogen a year at less than $1 per kg to fuel growing global demand. Industrial engineering group Thyssenkrupp’s modelling work for Leigh Creek Energy confirmed these figures.
Leigh Creek Energy said a pre-commercial demonstration at its Leigh Creek project site 550km north of Adelaide, produced significant quantities of ultra-low cost hydrogen.
Leigh Creek Energy’s major shareholder was China New Energy, a subsidiary of Shanghai-listed Shaanxi Meijin, already active in the Chinese hydrogen economy. Shaanxi Meijin built hydrogen vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen charging stations in China. Leigh Creek Energy was discussing a joint venture with Meijin to bring their technology to Australia. Hydrogen can be produced as a gas, liquid or component of other energy sources and can be used as a transport fuel, for heating, electricity and for industry.
Leigh Creek Energy saw the global hydrogen market’s valued at $100 billion with an annual growth rate of 6-8%. Leigh Creek coal fields originally supplied coal to the Port Augusta power station via a 260km train line. The power station site and rail line were sold in 2019 to China-backed CU-River Mining that planned to turn it into a global export port.
Leigh Creek Energy listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2015 and spent four years obtaining licences. In started a pre-commercial demonstration plant in 2019 to produce combined hydrogen, nitrogen, CO2 and methane as syngas. Aside from the hydrogen potential, the company said it intended to use that syngas to make urea, a nitrogen-based fertiliser. Hydrogen was produced as part of the urea production and could be removed and used as its own commodity.
Leigh Creek Energy would be one of the first companies in the world to use its own in-situ gasification to produce urea, allowing it to be done far more cheaply and efficiently than its competitors who bought gas at market rates to make fertiliser. Its gas production cost of $1 per gigajoule of compared to $10 for its competitors meant it could produce a tonne of urea for less than $100 a tonne. compared with the $400 it cost its overseas competitors to land a tonne of urea in Australia.
