CHE.06 Blue Hydrogen

• Pauletta Ioannidis
• Ruben Lopez
• Draga Ocokoljic
• Christopher Rannochio
• Olasubomi Solomon

Most of the world’s energy is produced from natural gas, oil, and coal. All of these methods produce carbon dioxide emissions which harm the environment and contribute to climate change. There has been a huge push for Blue Hydrogen production especially in Texas, USA for energy consumption through government incentives. The term Blue Hydrogen refers to the way hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, such as natural gas with carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS). The leading competing process is Grey Hydrogen production with some implementation of CCUS. About 95 percent of hydrogen is produced by grey hydrogen in the United States each year. There is a huge call for action regarding the carbon emissions being released into the environment because through complete grey hydrogen production, 98 MMT of carbon dioxide emissions is released each year in the USA. The three main methods for hydrogen production are Steam Methane Reforming (SMR), Partial Oxidization (POX), and AutoThermal Reforming (ATR). In grey hydrogen production with SMR and CCUS only 85 percent of carbon dioxide is captured compared to blue hydrogen production with ATR and CCUS which captures about 91 percent of carbon dioxide produced. By implementing CCUS, blue hydrogen production aims to reduce this amount of carbon emissions. ATR is an innovative process that uses both oxygen and steam to convert natural gas into hydrogen, with significantly lower carbon emissions than traditional SMR processes. Through the ATR process with CCUS, the goal is to produce 36 KMTA of blue hydrogen in Houston, Texas to supply to the refinery demand in the Gulf Coast. The future goal is to expand the hydrogen plant as the hydrogen market grows and supply to the transportation and energy sectors to help lower carbon emissions in those industries.