April 22, 2021 • Paul Rodden • Season: 2021 • Episode: 5
Welcome to The Hydrogen Podcast!
In episode 005, In this episode I discuss what blue hydrogen is, blue hydrogen generation, CCUS, and Import/Export of the product. I also go in depth on a few US/Global companies (and projects) that are helping shape the future of the hydrogen industry.
Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy the podcast. Please feel free to email me at info@thehydrogenpodcast.com with any questions. Also, if you wouldn’t mind subscribing to my podcast using your preferred platform… I would greatly appreciate it.
Respectfully,
Paul Rodden
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Transcript:
Hello again, everyone. On today’s show, let’s dive into the world of blue hydrogen, and what some of the world’s largest energy players are doing in the space.
So the big questions in the energy industry today are, how is hydrogen the primary driving force behind the evolution of energy? Where is capital being deployed for hydrogen projects globally? And where are the best investment opportunities for early adopters recognize the importance of hydrogen? I will address the critical issues and give you the information you need to deploy capital. Those are the questions that will unlock the potential of hydrogen. And this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Paul Rodden, and welcome to the hydrogen podcast.
If you listened to the first podcast, I talked a little bit about all the different colors of hydrogen and just did have a very high level overview of the different colors. And I’ve also recently done a little bit on turquoise hydrogen. Well, today I would like to focus in a little bit more on blue hydrogen, what it is and some of the major players in the space and what they’re doing. So to talk about blue hydrogen, I’m actually going to start with grey hydrogen, and grey hydrogen and blue hydrogen. Well, to generate the the hydrogen itself, it’s the same process. It’s either going to be from Steam methane reforming, which is SMR or autothermal reforming, ATR. Now, gray hydrogen has been around for a long time and it’s been used to create hydrogen to be used as a feedstock for things like ammonia. Now, the biggest drawback to grey hydrogen is that the co2 that gets produced from SMR, or ATR has just been released into the atmosphere.
But now with blue hydrogen, that co2 is captured. And that capturing process is called CCUS, or carbon capture, utilization, and storage. Now, most likely, if you’re just a downstream operator, you’re going to sell both of these products, you’re going to sell the hydrogen and you’re going to sell the co2, and then it’s up to the third party operator to dispose of the co2 however they choose. But whatever that choice is, it must conform to proper disposal or utilization methods that don’t release the co2 into the atmosphere. Now, CCUS can be anything from re injecting the co2 back into the ground to stimulate wells, it can be stored underground, it can be compressed and used in things like fire extinguishers, or it can go through another process to separate the carbon from the oxygen. Now, something to keep in mind, not all blue hydrogen is created equal.
There are actually two different ways of capturing the co2. One is to just capture the process co2, which is about 50 to 60% capure, the other is to capture both the process and the combustion co2, which is about 90%. That being said, the highest co2 capture rate I’ve seen mentioned so far is the BP h2 t side development that project is stated to capture 98% co2. Now the h2 t side project is a huge part of the UK decarbonisation strategy. In mid March, the UK Government announced $238 million in funding for nine projects in five industrial areas, with the BP t side development being a large part of that. The project right now is in a feasibility study, and BP has said that that they are targeting 2024 for their fid and production fully ramping up by 2027. Another project developing in the UK is a partnership between Shell and Harbour Energy. Acorn as the project is known is located on Scotland’s east coast. It’s expected to be started up by mid 2020s and is looking to store at least 5 million tonnes per year of co2 by 2030.
That being said, shell wants to see that number increased quite a bit with them hoping to have up to 25 million tonnes per year of CCS capacity by 2035. And now to talk about what Saudi Aramco is doing. Along with a partnership with China on blue hydrogen, Saudi Aramco has also announced that they will look into exporting hydrogen instead of LNG. So as many of you know, Aramco is the largest oil exporter in the world with an unbelievable amount of natural gas reserves. And in an article from natural gas Intel, even though the company is still considering exporting LNG, executives with the company stated that they want the guest to underpin blue hydrogen exports as the energy world shifts toward low carbon emissions. In September of 2020, In conjunction with the Institute of energy economics in Japan, Saudi Aramco had a blue ammonia export pilot project in which it produced and shipped 40 tons of blue ammonia to Japan.
It will be interesting to see in the future import and export of hydrogen, just how much ammonia plays into that. Since hydrogen can be so costly to move and transport, ammonia becomes a much more cost effective method of transporting hydrogen. Now for something going on here in North America. Suncor, one of Canada’s largest oil sands independence, along with some other oil and gas companies have joined in to back Svante. The company, which was founded in 2007 developed a new technology that captures carbon dioxide from flue gas concentrates it then releases it for safe storage all in 60 seconds.
According to their website, they use tailor made nanomaterials or solid absorbance with a very high storage capacity for carbon dioxide. According to our website, a sugar cube sized quantity of our material has the surface area of a football field. And their technology has been noticed by investors. Their most recent series D financing, totaled around $100 million. And according to Svante, and Suncor, that is the largest single private investment into a point source carbon capture technology globally to date. And in total, they’ve gotten more than $175 million to commercialize and develop their technology. Alright, everyone, that’s it for our little discussion on blue hydrogen, and what some of the larger companies are doing in the space. Have a great day everybody, stay safe and take care.
Hey, this is Paul. I hope you’d liked this podcast. If you did want to hear more. I’d appreciate it if you would either subscribe to this channel on YouTube, or connect with your favorite platform through my website at www.thehydrogenpodcast.com. Thanks for listening to very much. Appreciate it. Have a great day.
