Blue Hydrogen Production
Our Residue and Natural Gas Gasification process upgrades the bottom-of-the-barrel and other low-value streams into synthesis gas, allowing heavy industries and refiners to monetise residues, asphaltenes, heavy oils, gas or biomass via refinery consumption, power generation or other methods.
Shell Blue Hydrogen Process
The Shell Blue Hydrogen Process is an end-to-end lineup that enables affordable responsible hydrogen production. By applying proven carbon capture technologies, natural gas operators and those in the chemical and refining sectors can diversify their product mix and become low-carbon energy producers.
What is Blue Hydrogen?
Blue hydrogen is a common term for decarbonised hydrogen, which is hydrogen that is manufactured by natural gas reforming coupled with carbon capture and storage (CCS).
The main processes used for this are the Shell Blue Hydrogen Process (SBHP), steam methane reforming (SMR) and autothermal reforming (ATR).
By capturing and storing the carbon dioxide (CO2) that is generated as a by-product, the carbon intensity of hydrogen produced in these ways can be mitigated substantially; the SBHP can capture up to 99% of the CO2, for example. Because of that, blue hydrogen (which Shell refers to as decarbonised hydrogen) is often described as being a form of low-carbon hydrogen.
Note: The International Energy Agency has suggested that colour-based terminology for describing different types of hydrogen technologies has proved impractical. Instead, Shell refers to renewable hydrogen (in place of 鈥済reen hydrogen鈥�), decarbonised hydrogen (in place of 鈥渂lue hydrogen鈥�) and traditional hydrogen (in place of 鈥済rey hydrogen鈥�).
Advantages over steam methane reforming (SMR) and autothermal reforming (ATR)
The Shell Blue Hydrogen Process offers significant advantages over alternative technologies, which include steam methane reforming (SMR) and autothermal reforming (ATR).
For example, compared with SMR, it saves money by maximising carbon-capture efficiency and simplifying the process line-up, which offsets the oxygen production costs.
And, compared with ATR, it has a simpler line-up, with no need for substantial feed gas pretreatment, and does not require a fired heater that emits CO2. Another advantage is that the Shell Blue Hydrogen Process generates, rather than consumes, steam to satisfy the demands of the process.
These benefits translate to 22% lower levellised cost of hydrogen for SGP technology compared with ATR, and even greater benefits when compared with SMR.
Shell also has carbon capture and storage (CCS) experience through its involvement in multiple projects in different phases of development and can offer key experience and insights into CO虏 capture, compression, transport and storage.
Proven blue hydrogen technologies and real-world experience
Heavy industries and refiners can produce blue hydrogen from natural gas with applied carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Although green hydrogen (from the electrolysis of water using renewable power) is likely to be a long-term solution, analysts suggest it may not achieve cost parity with blue hydrogen until about 2045.
The Shell Blue Hydrogen Process integrates proven technologies 鈥� Shell gas partial oxidation (SGP) and ADIP ULTRA.
SGP technology is an oxygen-based system with direct firing in a refractory-lined reactor. It requires little or no feed-gas pretreatment, is a non-catalytic process that produces high-pressure steam from waste heat rather than consuming it and has no direct carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. SGP has more than 30 active gas and residue gasification licensees, and there are more than 100 SGP gasifiers worldwide, including at the Pearl gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar, and Pernis refinery in the Netherlands.
ADIP ULTRA is a proven solvent technology for capturing CO2 from high-pressure process streams.
Blue hydrogen insights
Get analysis, key takeaways and success factors from about 50 blue hydrogen production and process projects from all over the world.
Watch the webinar: Affordable blue hydrogen production
Download the webinar to hear gasification expert Nan Liu discuss the advantages of the Shell Blue Hydrogen Process.
