Sener is part of the H2Glass project to decarbonize the glass industry in Europe

Led by SINTEF Energy, it has a budget of 32 million euros, 24 million of which was financed by funds from the European Union’s Horizon Europe program and brings together 23 strategic partners, including Sener, to conduct real-time testing in European furnaces over the next 4 years. The goal is to transfer the findings of this research to all the furnaces and achieve the total decarbonization of the glass industry over the next 30 years.

The efforts of electro-intensive industries to replace the use of fossil fuels with green hydrogen still face many challenges in the process: generating the hydrogen, preparing the infrastructure, modifying and adjusting the process, the economic viability and safe handling in industrial facilities.

Hence the importance of building partnerships between experts from different areas to create synergies, share knowledge and speed up technological advances.

In addition, H2GLASS can provide an example to follow for other industries with high energy consumption, such as aluminum, which share many characteristics with the glass manufacturing process.

Xavier Lebuke, Project Manager for Renewable Energy Technologies, noted: “the challenge of this initiative is to use our technological experience and know-how in the world of hydrogen to make the project work by combining the different needs of glass and aluminum manufacturers, which are located in different European countries (and to which different safety regulations apply), with different furnace technologies, from oxy-combustion to regeneration. This can only be done with high-level engineering provided by experts with high technological qualifications and an open mind, who are able to steer and solve the problems posed by such a complex development and do so collaboratively.”

SENER joins this initiative to help end users who are part of the H2Glass consortium to define and design a safe and appropriate solution to integrate renewable hydrogen in their processes, so they can conduct the necessary tests and prepare for a future in which hydrogen will play an important role in decarbonizing the industry.