Samsung Engineering designs Sarawak green hydrogen project in Malaysia

Samsung Engineering Co., the construction and engineering unit of South Korea’s top conglomerate Samsung Group, said on Friday it has begun the basic design work for a clean hydrogen project in Sarawak, Malaysia.

The project, undertaken by three Korean firms – Samsung Engineering, Lotte Chemical Corp. and Korea National Oil Corp. – and their Malaysian partner Sarawak Economic Development Corp. (SEDC), is to produce renewable energy-based green hydrogen in Sarawak and bring it to Korea.

Samsung Engineering is solely responsible for the project’s initial design, called front-end engineering design, or FEED.

The company said representatives of the four partners, including SEDC Chief Executive Robert Hardin, had a kickoff meeting for the project in Seoul on Thursday.

The engineering design is for the construction of a green hydrogen production plant with an annual capacity of 150,000 tons and a green ammonia conversion plant with an annual capacity of 850,000 tons.

COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION IN 2028

“We will take into consideration technologies related to polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolysis and alkaline water electrolysis to create the most optimized method for clean hydrogen production,” said a Samsung Engineering official.

Officials said the final investment decision (FID) will be made by the end of next year based on the FEED. If all goes to plan, the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) work will follow and commercial production will begin in early 2028, they said.

“We hope to turn this project into an exemplary clean hydrogen development model from the early stage of FEED through to FID, EPC and commercialization,” the Samsung official said.

Write to Mi-Sun Kang at misunny@hankyung.com

In-Soo Nam edited this article.