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Morocco explores salt caverns for hydrogen storage

6 February 2025

 

A feasibility study is under way for a project to explore underground salt cavern sites for green hydrogen storage in Morocco.

According to Samir Rachidi, director-general at Iresen, the underground salt caverns are located near the capital Casablanca.

“There is already an existing cavity used to store natural gas,” Rachidi told MEED.

It is understood the same process or principle will be used to store green hydrogen in salt caverns.

The potential storage capacity of the salt caverns for green hydrogen can only be determined once the feasibility study is completed.  

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Underground salt caverns offer an option for the bulk storage of very large amounts of gaseous hydrogen.

According to Ireland-headquartered chemicals firm Linde, which operates the world’s first commercial hydrogen high-purity cavern in Texas, the gas has to be purified and compressed before it can be injected into a cavern.

It added that hydrogen-filled cavities can act as a backup for a pipeline network.

First green ammonia project

Rachidi also said that Moroccan phosphate specialist OCP is in the advanced stages of studying a project to produce 1 million tonnes of green ammonia annually by 2027.

The planned facility, which will cater to export markets, will include a 200,000 tonne-a-year (t/y) green hydrogen production plant and 4,000MW of renewable energy plants.

It will also include an electrolyser plant with a capacity of 2,000MW.

At least seven other green hydrogen or ammonia projects are under study or in the pre-front-end engineering and design stage in the North African state.

In April 2023, a team led by China Energy International Construction Group signed a memorandum of cooperation to develop a green hydrogen project in a coastal area in southern Morocco.

A year earlier, Serbia-headquartered renewables developer and investor CWP Global appointed US firm Bechtel to support the development of large-scale green hydrogen and ammonia facilities in Morocco and Mauritania.

The Amun green hydrogen project, which CWP Global plans to develop in Morocco, is understood to require 15GW of renewable energy and has an estimated budget of between $18bn and $20bn.

Morocco established a National Hydrogen Commission in 2019 and published a green hydrogen roadmap in 2021. 

The roadmap entails the production of green hydrogen for local ammonia production and export between 2020 and 2030; the production and export of green hydrogen, green ammonia and synthetic fuels between 2030 and 2040; and the global trade of these products between 2040 and 2050.   

Main photo: For illustrative purposes only (Adnoc)

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