Fuel Cell Production Plant Starts Operation
SK Engineering & Construction (SK E&C) announced on Oct. 20 that it has completed a fuel cell production plant in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province.
The Bloom SK Fuel Cell Plant is a joint venture between SK E&C and Bloom Energy of the U.S., a global fuel cell maker. SK E&C established the joint venture in January this year to localize solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). The company holds a 49 percent stake with Bloom Energy owning the remaining 51 percent.
The two companies started trial production of SOFCs in July. They are planning to expand the plant’s production volume from 50MW per year in 2021 to 400MW in 2027. The first SOFCs will be supplied to a fuel cell power plant that will begin to be built in January 2021. The plant will roll out the world's highest-level fuel cells.
At the opening ceremony, SK E&C announced two major achievements related to the promotion of SOFC projects. First, it has won an SOFC engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) project from Equinix, a major data center operator in the United States. It will build a 6.4MW SOFC facility in an Equinix data center in San Jose, California. Ground will be broken in April 2021. The facility will begin its commercial operation after eight months of construction.
In particular, SK E&C will apply its own SOFC double-decker design technology, Power Tower, to this project. This technology allows the installation of SOFCs in small spaces by building SOFCs in double layers.
In addition, SK E&C, Bloom Energy and SK Advanced signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for a fuel cell pilot project that uses auxiliary hydrogen as fuel. The project is designed to verify the commercial feasibility of producing SOFCs using hydrogen from a propylene production process at SK Advanced’s Ulsan PDH plant. If the three companies verify the commercial viability of the project, they will be able to prune operating expenses.
To that end, the three companies will build an SOFC facility for the pilot project by April 2021, operate it for about a year, and verify its commercial viability. SK E&C plans to carry out EPC work to build the SOFC facility, SK Advanced will be in charge of site provision and the supply of hydrogen, and Bloom Energy will run the SOFC facility, respectively.
An SOFC facility is the world's most efficient renewable distributed power generation facility that extracts hydrogen from liquefied natural gas (LNG) and produces electricity through reaction betwwen hydrogen with oxygen. Its power generation efficiency dwarfs that of conventional fuel cells. It produces eco-friendly energy without fine dust emissions safely using a small space. In the United States, it is installed and used in various sites such as Walmart and Home Depot in downtown areas, Morgan Stanley Building and Softbank's Office in New York and other buildings in downtown and residential areas.