A helping hand towards better processes
At HHM – Port of Hamburg Marketing, our Project Department is engaged in European projects that support further development ...
With its 72 tanks the Blumensand tank farm in the Port of Hamburg is already an eye-catcher today, but come 2026 at the latest, the whole of Germany will be focussing on the Oiltanking Deutschland facility. Why? It will be here that the first German import terminal for green ammonia as an energy carrier for transporting hydrogen will go on-stream. Hamburg’s First Mayor Peter Tschentscher is striving to create a ‘leading hydrogen hub in Europe’: “We want to make our contribution to securing a reliable energy supply for Germany and pushing ahead with decarbonising industry and commerce.”
The wheels for this were set in motion with the signature in February last year of a memorandum of understanding by representatives of Hamburg Ministry for Economics and Innovation – BWI, Hamburg Port Authority – HPA and the world’s biggest hydrogen producer, Air Products. This will ensure Germany’s strategic access to the environment-friendly source of energy via the Port of Hamburg. In mid-November, Air Products and Mabanaft announced the construction of a comprehensive hydrogen value-added chain, including an import terminal for green ammonia at Blumensand in the port.
Thanks to its 12.7-metre draft, the terminal is accessible to seagoing, bunker and inland waterway vessels. Shore-based rail tankcars and road tankers can be loaded or unloaded, and a pipeline is also available. According to Luisa Köneke, the spokeswoman for Mabanaft, the parent company of Oiltanking Deutschland, they and Air Products are “each investing a significant three-digit million sum for the ammonia import terminal, especially for its construction.”
Two conventional oil tanks will be dismantled and replaced by an ammonia tank. Liquified ammonia that possesses a very high storage capacity for hydrogen, will be transported to the Port of Hamburg in liquified gas tankers. In addition, the Blumensand quayside will be altered, with the terminal being equipped with loading stations for both liquified and gaseous hydrogen, as well as a range of pipeline connections for ammonia and hydrogen. Over and above this, there will be ‘ammonia crackers’ to convert hydrogen back out of ammonia.
According to the Mabanaft spokeswoman, the precise start of operations in 2026 “depends mainly on completing the approval process” for the new facilities, among other things by BUKEA – Hamburg Ministry for the Environment, Climate, Energy and Agriculture. Mabanaft is currently compiling the application documentation.
At the beginning of March 2022, BWI published its strategy: “Hamburg as a hub for hydrogen imports to Germany and Europe”. Together with HPA, it is currently developing the import infrastructure in the port area. “This should ensure that hydrogen imports will be available in adequate quantities from approximately 2030,” states BWI spokesman Martin Helfrich. At the latest by the end of the legislative period at the beginning of 2025, all nine of the strategy’s action items should have been implemented – they are “being continually worked on”, adds Helfrich. “Hydrogen as a source of energy is not ‘reaching for the stars’ but,” as he makes clear, “is rather already firmly planned in at numerous locations, with excavators already on the move in many infrastructure projects.”
Hamburg Senate has negotiated cooperation agreements with various producing countries for the international hydrogen industry’s European hub. Studies estimate that in 2030, between 43 and 70 percent of national hydrogen demand will have to be met by imports.
„Hamburg as hub
for German and
European hydrogen
imports“
During his Latin America tour last August, Tschentscher signed agreements in three countries. Hamburg and Chile jointly want to set up the necessary infrastructure, technologies and logistics chains for an efficient green hydrogen industry. Hamburg und Chilean port representatives are in regular contact over this. With Uruguay too, more intensive port cooperation is being sought. The aim is to create the necessary infrastructure for import/export of green hydrogen. Port of Hamburg Marketing and the port authority in Montevideo have reached an appropriate agreement. In Argentina too, Tschentscher sealed a deal with government representatives for future trade and logistics- oriented collaboration over hydrogen. There are further agreements with Scotland, Groningen in the Netherlands, in Canada with the Province of Newfoundland & Labrador with the Port of Halifax through a memorandum of understanding with HPA.
Industry is gaining its first experience with ammonia imports via the Port of Hamburg. For the copper manufacturer Aurubis, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company – ADNOC, from the United Arab Emirates, delivered an ammonia container to HHLA Container Terminal Altenwerder in September. The contents were destined for test runs of climate-neutral production of copper wire and to try out setting up a hydrogen supply chain. A further project followed involving HHLA, ADNOC and STEAG, the electricity generator, for a power station near Leipzig. “Here it was very much a question of involving and testing rail as a mode of transport for the distribution of energy into Hamburg’s hinterland,” explained HHLA spokeswoman Karolin Hamann. HHLA is currently working on other projects involving the import and distribution of hydrogen. As the future ‘Green Hydrogen Hub’ for Germany and Europe, the port will be the landing point for hydrogen imports via pipeline and vessel, being developed into a hydrogen distribution centre. Large quantities of imported hydrogen are expected to be required in the adjacent port. Industrial operations located there and trucking companies will have considerable demand by 2030. Resulting from a feasibility study in March last year, BWI and BUKEA gave the go ahead for an electrolysis plant for the production of green hydrogen on the site of the decommissioned coal-fired power plant at Moorburg. As its ‘primary aim’ BWI spokesman Helfrich called for a “Nucleus for the production, distribution and exploitation of green hydrogen in Hamburg.” From 2025, an initial output of 100 megawatts appears realistic. In years to come this should scale up to a planned roughly 800 megawatts.
Moreover, according to HHLA spokeswoman Hamann, the first working groups have started “with the development of various concepts for the application and supplying of hydrogen-driven equipment in the port and heavy-lift logistics.” A hydrogen-filling station ordered from Linde Engineering at the end of January “is currently under construction”, along with appropriate handling equipment. The concepts developed in the Clean Port & Logistics Cluster for operating, safety, maintenance & repair and refuelling equipment will, according to the HHLA spokeswoman, “probably be trialled and optimized in the second half of this year in daily business.”
With its HyPA – Hydrogen Port Applications project, HPA is equally setting an accent on providing hydrogen- filling stations, but here for locomotives, vessels and trucks, as well as the construction and implementation of hydrogen-powered vessels. The HPA subsidiary, Flotte Hamburg with some 50 city-owned craft is, in the words of its managing director Karsten Schönewald, currently planning a “test-bed for hydrogen-driven craft”. Initially hybrid dual-fuel motors for diesel and hydrogen should be implemented “as a bridge to 100 percent hydrogen.” Feasibility studies are already being carried out with manufacturers. Schönewald considers it realistic that the first barge will be hydrogen-driven in Hamburg in three years. For the international shipping industry, Hapag-Lloyd and Mabanaft are jointly working on the potential for clean ammonia bunkers – in and around the Port of Hamburg with its eye-catching Blumensand, among other places.