Low-carbon Hydrogen and Ammonia

A portfolio of technologies for low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia production, purification and recovery

Air Liquide Engineering & Construction offers a portfolio of technologies for low-carbon hydrogen, syngas and ammonia production, purification and recovery. The innovative technology solutions address a diverse range of needs and individual requirements of customers:

Autothermal Reforming

Air Liquide´s Lurgi™ Autothermal Reforming (ATR) is a process for producing syngas or hydrogen by mixing oxygen with natural gas and steam in a burner to reform natural gas with a catalyst. Oxygen blown ATR technology, when combined with carbon capture technology, is one of the most cost effective solutions to produce low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia at scale. 

Air Liquide is the only company that has all the proprietary technologies and capabilities needed to combine ATR with carbon capture technology into an integrated technology chain and can thus act as a super licensor for low carbon hydrogen and syngas facilities achieving carbon capture rates of more than 99% with excellent overall efficiencies.

We have a proven track record in successfully designing and implementing ATR technology at massive capacities required to serve the energy transition. Also, as Air Liquide is the leading technology supplier and operator for Air Separation Units (ASU), customers benefit from the know-how on integration and operation for both ATR and ASU. 

Steam Methane Reforming

Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) is a long proven, highly cost-effective and energy efficient way of producing hydrogen. Today, we provide SMR technology for hydrogen or syngas production on both a small and large scale with carbon capture and storage.

In particular, Air Liquide offers SMR-X technology, enabling zero-steam hydrogen production which can be combined with Air Liquide’s proprietary staged CO2 capture technology to achieve carbon capture rates up to 99% and is thus ideal for low-carbon hydrogen projects.

Our technology allows for flexible utilization of feedstocks, and designs may be optimized for lowest operating expenditure, highest efficiency or lowest total lifecycle cost. Different degrees of modularization and standardization can be applied to meet project requirements.

In the small to medium capacity range, Air Liquide’s, modularized Small SMR Standard Plant Suite with a flexible design to receive multiple feedstocks is an ideal fit for hydrogen supply to HVO refineries.

For all plant designs, excellence in availability and reliability remains a prime focus. In this area, our customers benefit from Air Liquide’s vast experience in operation with our own large portfolio of steam reforming plants.

Gas Partial Oxidation

GasPOx is well referenced, robust technology that is particularly suitable to convert low quality and demanding gaseous feedstocks into CO rich syngas and hydrogen.

These features have resulted in growing market interest in this technology in recent years. The POx technology is of particular interest for clients who want to turn crude syngas from a biomass gasification into renewable syngas and hydrogen.

 

Carbon Capture and Liquefaction

A distinctive aspect of our CO₂ management is our range of technologies which allows us to serve many customers and industries to decarbonize their processing facilities. 

One of our key capabilities is our market-leading development and application of cryogenic processes, which involves the use of extremely low temperatures to separate gases. One of our principal range of products developed in this area is known as Cryocap™. Cryocap™ H2 enables combined CO₂ separation, liquefaction and hydrogen purification and is thus the technology of choice in many projects

Air Liquide´s Recticap™ is a streamlined version of our proprietary and well referenced syngas treatment technology Lurgi Rectisol™ for CO2 capture at high energy efficiency. It is optimized for large-scale production of decarbonized hydrogen by ATR, and is a perfect fit for low carbon ammonia production beyond current world scale capacities.

With our proprietary technologies for CO2 capture (Cryocap™, Recticap™ and for integrated impurity removal, Rectisol™), and our referenced experience in the application of amine washes, coupled with our extensive operational experience, we have a range of highly competitive and industrially proven solutions for CO2  capture.

Pressure Swing Adsorption

One of our technologies, known as Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA), can recover and purify hydrogen from a wide range of hydrogen-rich streams.

PSA is an effective method of producing very pure hydrogen ‒ reaching purity levels of more than 99%. The units that carry out this process are compact and skid-mounted and designed for unmanned, automatic use.

 

Hydrogen Membranes

Air Liquide has developed unique expertise for high-performance hydrogen membranes. Membranes can be used on a stand alone basis for recovery of hydrogen from a process stream (such as ammonia purge gases), or for hydrogen purification integrated in a low carbon hydrogen plant.

 

Ammonia as a Hydrogen Carrier

Ammonia, with its potential for decomposition into nitrogen and hydrogen, can play an essential role in establishing hydrogen as an integral part of a low-carbon future

Air Liquide offers customers access to low-carbon ammonia production concepts. With our expertise for large scale hydrogen production, carbon capture technologies and nitrogen production, we offer solutions beyond the conventional ammonia production routes and capacities.

With our support, customers can benefit from seamless integrated low-carbon ammonia production concepts at scale.  With the addition of the necessary infrastructure for transport and storage, customer needs are fulfilled to make ammonia a valuable low carbon energy carrier. 

In collaboration with KBR

To enhance our offer, we have joined forces with KBR to provide fully integrated low-carbon ammonia solutions based on Autothermal Reforming (ATR) technology.

Air Liquide provides its proprietary and holistic expertise in ATR, and KBR its leadership in ammonia production technology. This collaboration provides customers with comprehensive and optimized solutions, serving as the only true one-stop shop for the industry.

The solutions we deliver can achieve outstanding energy efficiency and world-leading reliability with a production process which also allows for a carbon capture rate of up to 99% in highly integrated industrial facilities when combined with carbon capture technology.

In this context KBR´s renowned gas heated reforming technology (KRES) can be integrated with Air Liquide's technology for niche applications.

Liquid Nitrogen Wash

For the production of low carbon ammonia Liquid Nitrogen Wash technology is ideally suited as it is used to prepare an inert-free syngas for an efficient ammonia synthesis by washing the syngas with liquid nitrogen from the Air Separation Unit. Air Liquide´s experience in LNW technology comprises 50 references worldwide including the world’s largest operating reference.

  • Seine Valley: a cornerstone of the decarbonization ecosystem

    The Air Liquide Normand’Hy project is a cornerstone of the decarbonization ecosystem which is being set up by Air Liquide with other major industrial players on the Seine Valley axis in Normandy, France. Air Liquide operates its largest hydrogen production unit in Port-Jérôme which uses its unique Cryocap™ carbon capture technology. 

    By 2025, Air Liquide will connect a 200 MW Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyzer to its hydrogen pipeline network in Normandy to supply renewable hydrogen for industrial and heavy mobility applications. The project will help avoid the emission of more than 250,000 tonnes of CO2 per year and contribute to the development of the world’s first low-carbon hydrogen network.

     

     

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    Cryocap Port Jerome

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    Autothermal Reforming