Blue Hydrogen -- It's Happening -- North Dakota -- August 16, 2021

Updates

January 17, 2023: the update from RBN Energy did not include the Bakken.

August 17, 2021: link here. Blue hydrogen in the UK. Graphic pending, the dual-track blue hydrogen / green hydrogen program in the UK. Blue hydrogen in the UK will exceed CO2-emissions target, link here.

Original Post

A huge "thank you" to a reader for alerting me to The Williston Herald story. 

For background, see this June 2, 2021, post: blue hydrogen, Mitsubishi, Denbury, RBN Energy, and all that jazz. 

For more background, gray hydrogen, blue hydrogen, and green hydrogen, at Forbes, February 22, 2021.

“Green hydrogen is what Europe absolutely wants. But blue hydrogen is what a lot of the world thinks we can afford sooner and it’s probably going to be good enough,” he said. “It’s really more of a market-driven thing than a technology thing.”

From The Williston Herald (by the way, has anyone noticed that the Herald is getting better and better or is that just me?), link here. Data points:

• blue hydrogen hub in the Bakken
• to be built in about half the time "it usually takes" 
• a greenfield plant normally take ten years to build / become operational
• operator says a brownfield plant might take just five years
  
• operator / source of data: Bakken Energy
• announced August 16, 2021 (today)
• the deal:
• official name: the North Dakota Hydrogen Hub
  
• partners: Basin Energy and Mitsubishi Power
  
• Basin Electric Coop will purchase the assets of the Dakota Gasification Company
• Dakota Gasification Company owns the Great Plains Synfuels Plant
• expected to close April 1, 2023
• Synfuels to continue existing operations through 2025
• the plant, when complete:
• 310,000 metric tons of hydrogen per year
• primarily sourced through locally natural gas (CH4 --> CO2 and hydrogen)
• Mitsubishi Powers Americas
• the centrally-located North Dakota Hydrogen systems will connect Mitsubishi's planned wester and eastern US hubs to establish a national hydrogen network
• Mitsubishi: will create: a Change in Power division
  
• the CO2 will end up in CCS projects
  

From the blog, June 2, 2021, linked above:

To that end, Figure 1 below shows a simplified process flow diagram for a typical SMR unit.

Figure 1. Simplified SMR Flow Diagram. Source: RBN

To create hydrogen via SMR, natural gas is first fed into a processing unit called a reformer. There it reacts with high-temperature steam and a catalyst, usually one that is nickel-based, to form hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The resulting gas mix is then fed to the shift conversion unit, where the carbon monoxide reacts with the steam to produce even more hydrogen, plus carbon dioxide (CO₂). The hydrogen and carbon dioxide are then sent to a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit, where the CO₂ is removed from the hydrogen.