Mumbai, Dec 3 (PTI) TKIL Industries on Tuesday said that it has acquired a stake in Swiss company Sohhytec SA, which will give it access to a technology for producing green hydrogen directly from solar energy.
TKIL, formerly known as Thyssenkrupp Industries India, can produce pressurised hydrogen and also set up the infrastructure which will be required to store and fill up vehicles, the company's chief executive Vivek Bhatia said.
"We are already in conversations with OMCs (oil marketing companies) and we are giving our first proposals on what a hydrogen based retail facility will look like," Bhatia said.
Automobile companies have already created the necessary engines to make it possible for vehicles to run on hydrogen, Bhatia said, pointing to a particular model commercially launched by a Japanese automaker and added that heavy vehicles will also benefit from its usage.
Declining to disclose the stake bought in the Swiss company or the money invested for buying exclusive rights for the technology in India, Bhatia said Sohhytec has developed a unique technology of producing green hydrogen using nothing else but sun rays which will make a foray into the segment possible for TKIL.
Saurabh Tembhurne, founder and chief executive of Sohhytec, said this is a mature technology which has been piloted for over four years now and explained it as a process akin to photosynthesis being undertaken by plants to produce oxygen.
When asked about costs of manufacturing 1 kg of green hydrogen, especially given a publicly stated ambition of reducing it to USD 1 per kg in a decade by Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, Tembhurne indicated that such a costing may be a challenge.
Bhatia hinted that excluding any fiscal support in the form of subsidies, the company may be able to create green hydrogen at the cost of about Rs 400 per kg (over USD 4 at current exchange levels).
There will be applications beyond OMCs as well, and the company is also in conversation with steel plants and other industries to produce green hydrogen for plants, Bhatia said.
Tembhurne added that the technology is modular and off-grid, which means it can be set up at remote locations with a smaller amount of land required.
At present the two partners have potential to create capacity to manufacture up to 100 MW of green hydrogen, and TKIL will target to sell the capacity in a year's time across industries and use cases in the next one year, he said.
TKIL, which is aiming for a three times growth in its overall topline to Rs 10,000 crore in the next five years from the present Rs 3,500 crore a year, is looking at two-three more areas to venture into like green hydrogen, Bhatia said.
He said the company has sufficient cash reserves and cash flows to generate the funds required to take care of the expansion needs.