Hydrogen energy – about the development prospects in Kazakhstan

A seminar on hydrogen energy was held at KMG Engineering. The event was timed to coincide with Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day, celebrated around the world every October.

This is a special date for KMG Engineering. In 2022, the company established Kazakhstan’s first Competence Center for Hydrogen Energy and launched the country’s Hydrogen Technology Research Laboratory.

Representatives of the Competence Center for Hydrogen Energy presented their reports on the current topic: “Hydrogen Energy: Status and Production of Blue Hydrogen”.

As part of a detailed presentation, the Center’s employees informed about the growing potential for hydrogen energy development around the world, analyzed the work done and presented the tasks and prospects of KMGE in hydrogen production.

– The main criterion for classifying hydrogen is its environmental friendliness. The more carbon oxides emitted during hydrogen production, the less environmentally friendly it is. Hydrogen strategies are being rapidly adopted all over the world. Since September 2021, 9 countries have already announced their national hydrogen strategies, and today their number has already reached 25. Most are located in Europe. The demand for hydrogen is growing worldwide. In 2021, the demand reached 94 million tons. By 2030, the demand for hydrogen will double to about 180 million tons, – shared Alisa Kim, Lead Engineer at the Competence Center.

Speaking about the work done by KMG Engineering in the field of development of hydrogen energy in Kazakhstan, the Center’s representatives told about the contract concluded in September of this year. It is the Memorandum of Understanding with GreenSpark to share knowledge and conduct joint research to analyze data and gain practical experience in operating electrolysers.  

– The agreement with partners on further joint work was reached in the city of Aksai as part of the participation of employees of the Center in the official launch of the first pilot project for the production of green hydrogen in Kazakhstan, – A. Kim said.

This project includes solar panels that power the electrolysers and, in turn, split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The system also contains water purification filters, since the electrolysers require that the water be clean before hydrogen can be produced.  It is the only one of its kind first implementation in the history of our country’s energy industry, an important milestone and signal to the market to demonstrate in practice how our country’s resources can be used efficiently and produce clean energy.

Sharing plans for the future, representatives of the Center noted that in the near future KMG Engineering plans to join the Green Hydrogen Alliance. The decision to create the Alliance was made as part of Kazakhstan’s first Green Hydrogen Forum, co-founded by the AIFC Green Finance Center. Currently, about 10 companies associated with the production of green hydrogen in the country have already become members of the Alliance.

Yerdaulet Abuov, a researcher at KMGE’s Hydrogen Technology Research Laboratory, spoke about the Concept of Blue Hydrogen Production in Western Kazakhstan as exemplified by the North Caspian Project.

– Kazakhstan currently has large reserves of natural gas, but a shortage is expected due to the growing demand for gas within Kazakhstan. Up to 40% of produced gas is used for re-injection to maintain reservoir pressure in large projects. We are now evaluating the possibility of using the currently injected crude gas (40% of the produced gas) to produce hydrogen, which emits CO₂ in the process. Worldwide practice shows that CO₂ can also be used to maintain reservoir pressure. Such an experience would free up additional volume of crude gas and at the same time, without losing the pace of oil production in the fields by means of CO­₂ injection. In the near future we plan to explore the impact of CO₂ injection on production processes in specific fields, – Ye. Abuov said. In connection with the upcoming work, the expert called for a joint study of the use of CO₂ in domestic fields and the cooperation of the EOR developers.

Share post: