India´s IOC to build India's 1st green hydrogen plant at at its Mathura refinery

New Delhi, July 20 - Neftegaz.RU. India's largest oil firm IOC will build the nation's 1st 'green hydrogen plant at Mathura refinery, as it aims to prepare for a future catering to the growing demand for both oil and cleaner forms of energy.

CEO of the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) Shrikant Madhav Vaidya said:

• IOC has drawn a strategic growth path that aims to maintain focus on its core refining and fuel marketing businesses while making bigger inroads into petrochemicals, hydrogen and electric mobility over the next 10 years
• The company will not set captive power plants at all its future refinery and petrochemical expansion projects and instead use the 250 MW of electricity it produces from renewable sources like solar power
• We have a wind power project in Rajasthan
• We intend to wheel that power to our Mathura refinery and use that electricity to produce absolutely green hydrogen through electrolysis

Vaidya said IOC was pushing ahead with research on carbon capture, utilisation and storage technologies - space where it is seeking global collaboration to meet its Paris climate goals.

IOC is planning to set up several hydrogen production units on a pilot basis.
This includes a project at Gujarat refinery to produce finite purity hydrogen of 99.9% for hydrogen fuel cell buses.

Forecasts by various agencies seeIndia´s fuel demand climbing to 400-450 million tonnes by 2040 as against 250 million tonnes now.
Vaidya said:

• This gives enough legroom for all forms of energy to co-exist, he said adding the demand growth makes it imperative to pursue refining expansion as well as expand footprint in compressed natural gas, LNG, biodiesel and ethanol