World’s first renewable ethanol hydrogen plant built at São Paulo Uni

Brazil has found yet another use for ethanol, this time, it’s not fuelling cars, but making the fuel to fuel the cars.

The University of São Paulo (USP) is now testing the world’s first hydrogen production plant that runs on the country’s favourite biofuel.

Led by USP’s Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Innovation (RCGI), the project is being billed as a potential breakthrough in sustainable energy and a further development in decarbonising Brazil’s transport and industrial sectors.

Nestled in USP’s main campus in São Paulo, the pilot plant has been developed with the backing of R$ 50 million and a roster of heavyweight industry names including Shell Brazil, Raízen, Hytron (now under Neuman & Esser), SENAI CETIQT, Toyota, Hyundai, Marcopolo, and the São Paulo Metropolitan Urban Transport Company (EMTU).

The plan, USP says, is to demonstrate that ethanol can be a viable carrier for hydrogen production, while making use of Brazil’s already well-established ethanol infrastructure.

From sugarcane to hydrogen

The process at the heart of this operation is something called ethanol steam reforming, a chemical reaction that extracts hydrogen from ethanol by adding water and heat.

The CO₂ produced in this method is classed as biogenic, meaning it can be offset by the sugarcane crop cycle.

So in theory, this means hydrogen production with minimal carbon baggage – though, as always, the devil is in the details.

For now, the pilot plant is geared to produce up to 100kg of hydrogen per day.

That’s enough to fuel three buses and two light-duty hydrogen vehicles, specifically a Toyota Mirai and a Hyundai NEXO, which will be put to the test on USP’s public transport network.

Researchers will be monitoring conversion efficiency, fuel consumption, and real-world performance to assess the viability of scaling this up.

RCGI’s scientific director, Julio Meneghini, is keen on ethanol’s potential, stating: “We are driving an energy transition by demonstrating that sustainable hydrogen can be produced from ethanol with high logistical efficiency.”

Given Brazil’s robust ethanol supply chain, the hope is that this technology could decarbonise not just transport, but also emissions-heavy industries such as steelmaking, cement, chemicals, and fertiliser production.

Carbon negative hydrogen production

Back in 2023, when the project was first announced, the target was a hydrogen production rate of 4.5kg per hour, with ambitions to scale up to 45.5kg per hour if all went well.

At the time, there was plenty of discussion about ethanol-derived hydrogen being carbon-negative – meaning it could remove more CO₂ from the atmosphere than it emits – along with the possibility of installing ethanol reformers at existing fuel stations to produce hydrogen on-site at competitive costs.

Whether that vision materialises remains to be seen, but the current pilot does at least show some real-world progress.

Governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, turned up for a look around, proclaiming that São Paulo has “all the elements” to lead Brazil’s energy transition.

The governor is indeed correct in saying that Brazil is uniquely placed to push this technology forward.

Unlike many countries, it has an ethanol industry ready to go, and unlike some of hydrogen’s more utopian promises, this one has an existing supply chain and distribution network to plug into.

A niche solution or a scalable answer?

Whether ethanol-derived hydrogen becomes a game-changer remains an open question.

The technology is an interesting workaround for hydrogen’s infamous distribution problem, offering an alternative to what can be costly compression and cryogenic storage.

That said, even if the numbers stack up, there’s still the challenge of commercialisation.

Hydrogen from ethanol has a chance of being a useful transitional technology – particularly in Brazil, where ethanol is already king – but whether it can carve out a global niche is a much bigger question.

Still, USP’s project does at least move ethanol-based hydrogen from concept to reality. And with some of the industry’s biggest names involved, there’s serious weight behind it.

We’ll just have to wait and see if ethanol can muscle in on the hydrogen game but for now, it certainly is another promising piece of the clean energy puzzle.