Sustainable Hydrogen - Potential for Bothnia Gulf Cluster

Hydrogen economy is seen as one of the most promising solutions towards a sustainable energy supply. It has become the key technology of the energy transition with an enormous strategic importance for Europe. Hydrogen is also a critical factor in the development of the industrial cluster in the Bothnia Bay region to maintain competitive and sustainable activities. A sustainable H2 economy would enable significant business opportunities and a large reduction in carbon emissions in the program region.

The Sustainable Hydrogen project focuses on complete sustainable hydrogen value chains from H2 production to its storage and industrial use. New long-term technical solutions are developed for renewable hydrogen production by photocatalysis and methane pyrolysis. The project focuses also on biomass gasification and process integration for enabling the production of hydrogen-rich syngas. Sustainable Hydrogen cooperates with local industries for replacing fossil reducers and fuels with renewable hydrogen.

System analysis tools are used for giving a holistic knowledge on how a long-term robust and sustainable H2 energy ecosystem can be developed around the Bothnia Bay. The project fosters knowledge transfer and information sharing between the stakeholders in ecosystem events, press releases and scientific publications. Overall, the expertise of the project group and stakeholders enables to strengthen the role of the program region in H2 economy and helps to achieve the EU sustainability targets by 2030 and 2050.

Aims

The project proposes new technological long-term solutions for sustainable hydrogen production, use and storage. The expected main results are CO2-neutral or even CO2-negative and energy-efficient hydrogen production methods, and sustainable solutions for H2 use and storage. System analysis enables valuable outcomes on holistic knowledge on hydrogen energy system in the region. Project also facilitates new knowledge transfer between the stakeholders by arranging public seminars and sharing information in means of scientific publications, news, and press releases. Overall, the expertise of project group and stakeholders enables to strengthen the role of region in H2 economy and improves to achieve the EU sustainability targets by 2030 and 2050.

Project implementation

The work of the project is divided in five WPs as follows:

WP1: Coordination and management
Lead; UOulu, Irja Ruokamo/Prem Seelam

WP1 covers general management of project, including project administration issues, such as arrangement of project meetings, coordination of stakeholder collaboration, reporting of project activities and financial management of project.

WP2: Sustainable hydrogen production
Lead; UOulu, Ulla Lassi

WP2 is focusing on the development of sustainable hydrogen production using photocatalysis in water splitting, methane pyrolysis (hydrogen production from biogas) and biomass gasification to syngas. The key idea behind this WP is the energy-efficient and CO2 free technologies for hydrogen production, in order to fulfill the criteria of green transition in the EU level.

WP3: Sustainable hydrogen use and storage
Lead; UOulu, Mohammed Ali

WP3 promotes the development of emerging hydrogen-based industrial processes for reduction of iron oxides and facilitate an expeditious increase in the hydrogen content of blast furnaces, thus enabling a faster measure for decreasing the CO2 emissions during the transition from conventional to novel ironmaking technologies. Further, the idea of WP3 is to enable achieving the envisioned change towards fossil-free society, thus strengthening the metallurgical know-how of steels. The target is to focus on the use of ultrahigh-strength steels in hydrogen society like storage, transportation, and distribution of H2. It is noteworthy that the H2-based business is new and on the development phase. Overall, the aim is to increase understanding the phenomenon of hydrogen embrittlement (HE) and hydrogen assisted or induced cracking (HAC/HIC) causes loss all mechanical and chemical properties in steels (metals) and their applications.

WP4: Systems analysis
Lead; LTU, Joakim Lundgren

WP4 puts a holistic perspective on research activities carried in WP2 and WP3 with a strong emphasis on techno-economic assessments. The aim is to better understand the techno-economic opportunities and challenges for commercialization and identify possible needs of further research and development. The economic assessments will be based on traditional investment and cost analysis from a business perspective. The technical evaluations include calculation of system- and energy efficiencies and other important technical key performance indicators. Conceptual comparisons with water electrolysis for hydrogen production are carried out. Technical and cost data will be provided by the project and associate partners or taken from the open literature.

WP5: Dissemination of project results (UOulu and LTU)

WP5 involves joint activities of partners and focus on dissemination, exploitation related tasks. We aim at several joint publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. We will also write a joint project report at the end of project.

Project poster

https://www.interregaurora.eu/approved-projects/sustainable-hydrogen/

The Sustainable Hydrogen project contributes primarily to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 7 (Affordable and clean energy), 9 (Industry, innovation and infrastructure) and 12 (Responsible consumption and production).

Project publications

(Open access, links will be updated for accepted publications)

WP2:

Ekta Rani, Parisa Talebi, Terhi Pulkkinen, Vladimir Pankratov and Harishchandra Singh (H.R): Flexible nanosheets for plasmonic photocatalysis: microwave-assisted organic synthesis of Ni–NiO@Ni2CO3(OH)2 core–shell@sheet hybrid nanostructures, https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/na/d3na00583f

Harishchandra Singh*, Miska Veijola-Kara, Ekta Rani, Leticia S. Bezerra, Parisa Talebi, Hugo L. Sousa dos Santos, Akhilesh Kumar Patel, Marko Huttula, Pedro H.C. Camargo: Nickel Tellurate Nanorods and Nanoparticles for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction, ACS Applied Nano Materials Vol 7/Issue 11: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsanm.4c00935

Leticia S. Bezerra, Paul Brasseur, Sam Sullivan-Allsop, Rongsheng Cai, Kaline N. da Silva, Shiqi Wang, Harishchandra Singh, Ashok K. Yadav, Hugo L. S. Santos, Mykhailo Chundak, Ibrahim Abdelsalam, Vilma J. Heczko, Elton Sitta, Mikko Ritala, Wenyi Huo, Thomas J. A. Slater, Sarah J. Haigh, Pedro H. C. Camargo; Ultralow Catalytic Loading for Optimised Electrocatalytic Performance of AuPt Nanoparticles to Produce Hydrogen and Ammonia: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202405459

Matthias Weil , Prativa Pramanik, Pierfrancesco Maltoni, Rebecca Clulow, Andreas Rydh , Manfred Wildner , Peter Blaha , Graham King , Sergey A. Ivanov , Roland Mathieu and Harishchandra Singh: CoTeO4 – a wide-bandgap material adopting the dirutile structure type, DOI: 10.1039/D3MA01106B (Paper) Mater. Adv., 2024, 5, 3001-3013 (Royal Society of Chemistry)

Maite Perfecto-Irigaray , Garikoitz Beobide , Oscar Castillo , Michael G. Allan, Moritz F. Kühnel, Antonio Luque, Harishchandra Singh, Ashok Kumar Yadav and Sonia Pérez-Yáñez: Unravelling co-catalyst integration methods in Ti-based metal–organic gels for photocatalytic H2 production, DOI: 10.1039/D4DT00880D (Paper) Dalton Trans., 2024, 53, 9482-9494 (Royal Society of Chemistry)

Lundgren J., Vreugdenhil B., Ganjkhanlou Y., Baldwin R. (2025). Biomass gasification for hydrogen production. IEA Bioenergy report. ISBN 979-12-80907-56-1

WP3:

T. Allam, M. Ali, X. Guo, S. Ghosh, C. Haase, M. Jaskari, A. Järvenpää, A. Hamada, Simultaneous enhancement of mechanical properties and resistance to hydrogen-assisted degradation by multiple precipitation and nano-twinning in medium manganese steel. Materials Science and Engineering: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2023.145203

The THERMEC 2023 conference article has been published in Materials Science Forum, https://www.scientific.net/MSF.1105.19

Mohammed Ali, Tuomas Alatarvas, Jukka Kömi: Impact of niobium addition and non-metallic inclusions’ characteristics on the microstructure and mechanical properties of low-carbon CrNiMnMoB ultrahigh-strength steel: A comprehensive investigation. Journal of Materials Research and Technology: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmrt.2024.05.002

Heidari, A., & Fabritius, T. (2025, January 13). Optimizing Energy Consumption in Hydrogen Reduction of Iron Ore Pellet: Insights from HSC Chemistry Analysis. https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp212.030

Heidari, A., Heikkilä, A., Iljana, M., & Fabritius, T. (2024). A Comparison Between the Reduction Behavior of DRI and BF Pellets in H2 and CO Atmospheres. Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy, 10(4), 2068–2084. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40831-024-00951-x

Mohammed Ali, Tuomas Alatarvas, Tun Nyo and Jukka Kömi. Effect of Mo and Mo+Nb Additions on the Phase Transformation and Microstructure of a Developed Low-Carbon CrNiMnB Ultrahigh-Strength Steels with a Preceding Hot Deformation, Materials Science Forum, ISSN: 1662-9752, Vol. 1105, pp https://doi.org/10.4028/p-iAxD9d

Heidari A, Ilmakangas T, Pöyhtäri S, Heikkinen E-P, Sulasalmi P, Fabritius T. The influence of water vapour on hydrogen reduction of iron ore pellets. Ironmaking & Steelmaking (2025). doi:10.1177/03019233251352979

Wang, Y., Heidari, A., Singh, H. et al. In Situ SXRD Study of Phase Transformations and Reduction Kinetics in Iron Ore During Hydrogen-Based High-Temperature Reduction. Metall Mater Trans B (2025). doi.org/10.1007/s11663-025-03725-2

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