One of the biggest users of gaseous hydrogen today is crude oil refineries. The flow of gas that’s put to use in many conventional refineries comes from having a steam methane reformer (SMR) on-site to produce hydrogen to order, extracted from a natural gas stream. Some other refineries, meanwhile, have entered into an over-the-fence commercial hydrogen supply scheme with an industrial gases operating company. In some locations, pipelines are widely used, with hundreds of miles of pipelines connecting hundreds of hydrogen producers and offtakers in the Gulf Coast region of the US, for example.
With decarbonisation to the fore, there are moves afoot today to move away from SMRs, which consume natural gas and emit carbon dioxide (CO2). Refiners are considering electrolysis to generate green hydrogen, while there are also moves to capture the CO2 from SMRs and turn turn the grey hydrogen into less-carbon-intensive blue.
This greening of refinery hydrogen production is important, naturally, but it is not the focus here. Instead, I want to explore how and why hydrogen is required to process modern fossil-free biofuels and synthetic fuels from electrochemistry.
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