Gas 2023 Issue

a limited extent, older and less efficient units are replaced rather than upgraded. Reconfiguring or upgrading the SMR furnace is very expensive because the steam generation, process, and flue gas heat recovery system are integrated. Furthermore, it is often necessary to generate more hydro - gen and, therefore, build a larger unit. New SMR units tend to be designed to export less steam or even no steam at all. This leads to substantial reductions of CO 2 emissions in the SMR, at least part of which is likely to be offset by steam generation elsewhere unless green electricity can generate steam. With pre-combustion carbon capture, at least 30% of the CO 2 generated will still be released. An SMR equipped with pre-combustion capture will still emit the CO2 from the fuel fired. Furthermore, the carbon in the feed that is not con - verted to CO2 in the reaction section but downstream in the PSA will not be captured. It will still leave the unit as CO2 from the furnace stack. Thus, higher capture rates require post-combustion capture, which is more expensive in terms of capital expenditures and operating costs. Finally, ATR and POX do not use separate furnace firing as SMRs do. Therefore, pre-combustion capture allows a larger percentage of CO2 to be captured. As a result, ATR/ POX units may be preferred over greenfield SMRs for pro - ducing blue hydrogen on a large scale.

Nitesh Bansal, Proposal Segment Manager, Topsoe, niba@topsoe.com There are multiple advantages of using ATR technology for blue hydrogen production: • High carbon capture is possible using ATR. Topsoe SynCOR (advanced ATR) can achieve up to 99% carbon capture using only process gas carbon capture • ATR technology can provide the scale of operation, which is the key feature for blue hydrogen production. Topsoe SynCOR (advanced ATR) can reach up to 800,000 Nm3/h hydrogen capacity in a single train • Overall levelised cost of hydrogen production (LCOH) is lower in ATR compared to SMR due to the scale-up Capex as well as lower Opex and higher carbon capture credits. This begs the question: can CO2 emissions from SMR units be further reduced? CO 2 emissions from SMR units can be reduced by 60-65% by installing process gas carbon capture. If there is a requirement to further reduce carbon capture by >90%, there are multiple options: • H 2 firing in the reformer. This will increase the overall plant size by 30% • Installing flue gas carbon capture. This is expensive from both a Capex and Opex point of view.

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Gas 2023