The Bell Bay Powerfuels Project is an under-development green hydrogen and methanol production facility of ABEL Energy (developer and owner) in northern Tasmania, Australia.
ABEL has partnered with Iberdrola Australia in December 2022 wherein Iberdrola will inject €1100m in the development of the project.
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In January 2024, the Governments of the Commonwealth and Tasmania finalised an agreement with ABEL to finance the project with A$70m ($46.41m).
ABEL plans to take the Final Investment Decision (FID) of the A$1.2bn ($0.80bn) project at the end of 2024.
The construction is expected to commence at the beginning of 2026. More than 500 workers will be employed during the construction phase.
The construction phase will create direct and indirect jobs for over 250 workers for at least 30 years.
Scheduled to be in operation in 2027, the project will have a gross regional impact of over A$4.6bn ($3.05bn), abate 540,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, and create local renewable fuel uptake opportunities in Tasmania.
Bell Bay Powerfuels Project Location
The Bell Bay Powerfuels Project will be developed at the Bell Bay Power Station site operated by Hydro Tasmania in Bell Bay.
The Bell Bay Power Station was initially fired by oil and gas and is now decommissioned. The station is not destroyed completely.
The station site has remnants of infrastructure which must be repaired or destroyed. The infrastructure includes a pier, buildings, roads, and a former waste dump site. The site can be accessed via the East Tamar Highway.
Bell Bay is Australia’s major port with a handling capacity of 59% of the manufactured exports of the state.
Bell Bay is situated on an estuary known as River Tamar or Kanamluka. The port houses the largest industrial precinct of Tasmania.
The port lies south of George Town and is connected to the Tasmanian power transmission network, the Basslink Interconnector, and Victoria.
Bell Bay Powerfuels Project Details
The Bell Bay Powerfuels Project will consist of electrolysers, feedstocks, a biomass combustion plant, storage facilities, power infrastructure, and a water source including a treatment facility.
A 260MW water electrolysis plant will consist of a process section to treat gas, an electrolyte circulation chamber, cell feed and discharge chambers.
Demineralised water will be added to the alkaline solution in the plant to replace the consumed water by electrolysis.
The plant will produce 120 tonnes of green hydrogen per day and oxygen. Hydrogen will be cooled, filtered, and sent to the methanol plant or hydrogen storage by compression and oxygen will be cooled, filtered, and used to produce biomass or stored.
The biomass combustion will occur in the biomass combustion plant. Oxygen from electrolysis will be the source of combustion to produce renewable carbon dioxide and green methanol.
Feedstocks consisting of 500,000 tonnes per year of wood biomass will be stored under cover at the biomass terminal to dry.
Biomass chips will be loaded onto conveyor and fed into the gasifier of the plant. The combustion plant will produce 94% pure carbon dioxide with minimum inert compounds.
The biomass will be converted into synthesis gas (syngas) made up of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen. This process is known as gasification.
The syngas will be combined with green hydrogen and fed into a methanol reactor producing green methanol in the presence of a catalyst.
The project will produce 300,000 tonnes of green methanol per year which will be stored in tankers and loaded onto trucks for export in Tasmania.
Through the jetty, 50,000 tonnes of green methanol will also be exported to the national and international market via methanol tankers around six times per year.
Power Infrastructure
The Bell Bay Powerfuels Project will receive power from wind turbines. Hydro Tasmania will provide power by hydro generation.
As per the knowledge-sharing report, the average power demand for the project is 95.4MW.
TasNetworks manages the Tasmanian electricity grid. The Tasmania network is connected to the George Town substation via 220kV Tamar Valley transmission lines.
The George Town substation receives 110kV power from the Tamar Valley power station and the former Bell Bay power station.
The George Town substation distributes 110kV power to industries in Bell Bay. The substation connects the Tasmanian network and the mainland via 500MW 400kV Basslink Interconnection.
Bell Bay Powerfuels Project Contractors
In January 2024, ABEL awarded the Engineering Production and Construction (EPC) contract for the Bell Bay Powerfuels Project to Worley.
Worley will also collaborate with pitt&sherry to deliver the best for the project.
ABEL selected thyssenkrupp nucera as the preferred supplier of the 260MW of electrolysers for the project in March 2024.
Thyssenkrupp will also supply its 20MW alkaline water electrolysis modules known as Scalum to produce green hydrogen from the project.
Johnson Matthey and SunGas Renewables, a subsidiary of GTI International, received the contracts to supply technologies for the project by ABEL in November 2023.
Johnson Matthey and SunGas have been working with ABEL on the design and optimisation studies for the project.
Johnson Matthey will deliver its optimised methanol synthesis loop and catalyst technology for the project. SunGas will deliver its optimised SunGas System 1000 gasifier for the project.
The knowledge-sharing report of the project was prepared by ABEL with the support of government bodies, local groups, study participants, and membership organisations.
The government bodies included the Tasmanian Government, TasNetworks, Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Tasmania, Hydro Tasmania, and TasPorts.
The local groups included NRM North, Timberlink Australia, Timberlands Pacific, Forico, and Bell Bay Advanced Manufacturing Zone.
The study participants were thyssenkrupp, pitt&sherry, Nuffield, Foresion, PricewaterhouseCoopers (pwc), and AT+M. The Methanol Institute and CO2 Value Australia were the membership organisations.
