Fuel cell technology is moving at a very fast pace, Impala Platinum (Implats) refining and marketing executive Sifiso Sibiya said earlier this month.

Hydrogen gas from energy company Sasol is already piped to the Impala Platinum refinery site in Springs, on the East Rand, where Implats has donated 16 ha of land for fuel cell manufacture on the platinum group metals special economic zone (SEZ).

“It’s exciting times in terms of hydrogen energy and fuel cells and we should be seeing quite steep developments in the coming 12 to 24 months. Where we were two . . . three years back was totally different to where we are currently,” Sibiya said in response to Engineering News & Mining Weekly during a roundtable media conference.

“We’re crystallising our plans and once we have that we’ll definitely come back to the market.”

Implats will be doing a lot more to boost its ‘green’ company credentials and was recently recognised for its strong management of water security risk.

“I’m hoping that, within the next 6 to 12 months, we will start announcing some major renewable-energy and other green projects,” said Muller.

Implats corporate affairs executive Johan Theron said that having hydrogen already piped to the site enhanced the company’s decarbonisation efforts “and there are options to do more with that hydrogen”.

Sibiya said the SEZ was attracting foreign manufacturers to South Africa to manufacture products that would help the world in its quest to decarbonise.

The company had, he said, recently hosted consultants engaged in an environmental-impact assessment and was working closely with its Gauteng Industrial Development Zone partners.

“We’re still following our fuel cell development roadmap. So, we still support our partners, including Hydrogen South Africa. We’re looking at how we can use fuel cell technology within our facilities. . . . [L]ook at where Eskom is going . . . we are discussing what we can do to ensure that our operations remain viable in the case of the nonexistence of Eskom,” he said.

On using solar energy to produce hydrogen on site, he responded: “We looked at a project last year but it only gave us 11 MW and we need about 22 MW for our operation throughout the day. That was insufficient – in terms of space, solar requires a large number of hectares on which to place solar panels. At night, if we had generated hydrogen from there, it would have given us 200 kW, which would not have been sufficient to run our operations.

“We are continuously investigating different technologies and what is quite nice within the market is the fast pace at which fuel cell technology is moving,” Sibiya added.