The flagship project ZEUS demonstrates green hydrogen production and a closed carbon cycle with renewable gases and liquid hydrocarbons in an industrial environment. Well-known partners from the energy sector, industry and research will advance the implementation of the European climate goals and the national hydrogen strategy in the period from 2023 to 2027. K1-MET GmbH is the consortium leader.

The large-scale production of hydrogen from renewable energy is the basis for directly avoiding climate-damaging CO2 emissions in the long term. In addition to the expansion of renewable energy production, the aim is to increase the interconnection of the energy sector and the energy-intensive industry, also known as sector coupling. Power generation from renewable energy generates massive energy surpluses in the summer, which are needed in the winter due to the greatly reduced availability and the increased demand. With the help of sector coupling, the surpluses can be converted into storable products such as green hydrogen or renewable hydrocarbons (e. g. synthetic natural gas) to stabilise the energy system. In addition, there are industrial processes with unavoidable CO2 emissions, because CO2 is formed by the raw materials and not by the used fossil fuel. Thus, the chemical conversion of CO2 and hydrogen into valuable, storable products is another important aspect of sector coupling and should contribute to achieving climate neutrality.

The flagship project ZEUS focuses on the electricity sector and the steel and cement sectors, which are difficult to decarbonise. The aim is to develop and demonstrate cross-sectoral climate-neutral process chains – from the production and preparation of green hydrogen under fluctuating process conditions, to the capture of CO2 from industrial waste gases and the conversion into valuable, storable hydrocarbons. Various pilot plants and processes are investigated in industrial environment (6 MW PEM electrolysis, CO2 capture, catalytic methanation, CO2 electrolysis) to demonstrate interconnected, holistic process chains. The ZEUS flagship project aims to speed up the transfer of climate-friendly technologies into practice through its demonstration character. Another goal is to sustainably anchor sector coupling in Austria.