The Shell Blue Hydrogen Process, which integrates proprietary Shell Gas POx (SGP) and ADIP ULTRA technologies, increases the affordability of blue hydrogen production. It offers significant advantages over the alternatives, steam methane reforming and autothermal reforming. Blue hydrogen refers to hydrogen that is produced from fossil fuels with applied carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS) to limit the carbon intensity of the process. Blue H2 sometimes is referred to as low-carbon hydrogen.
Without low-carbon hydrogen, it will be difficult to decarbonise hard-to-abate heavy industry and achieve international net-zero emissions ambitions. Today’s hydrogen production is mostly carbon-intensive grey hydrogen. Green hydrogen (from the electrolysis of water using renewable power) is likely to be a long-term solution, but may not achieve cost parity with “blue” hydrogen, produced from natural gas with CCS, for some time assuming ideal development and market conditions. Moreover, this analysis is based on producing blue hydrogen using conventional steam methane reforming (SMR) and autothermal reforming (ATR) technologies, not the Shell Blue Hydrogen Process which, in many situations, significantly improves blue hydrogen economics at present. For more details on these improvements, download the Shell Blue Hydrogen Process white paper below.
