Shell and German energy firm Uniper have contracted three firms—including French industrial gases company Air Liquide, France’s Technip Energies and Shell’s catalysts and technologies subsidiary— to deliver plant design proposals for the planned 720MW Humber Hub project.

The company that has its proposal selected will go on to become the project’s preferred technology provider, supporting Feed and EPC stages ahead of FID in 2025.

Shell Catalysts and Technologies plans to submit a process design package using its Shell Blue Hydrogen Process (SBHP), which the company claims is more cost-effective than existing methods of hydrogen production.

2025 – FID expected on Humber Hub

“Momentum is building for low-carbon hydrogen and also for the SBHP, which has recently been selected for a number of other Shell projects,” says Nick Flinn, vice-president for decarbonisation technologies at Shell Catalysts and Technologies.

“Before we developed the SBHP in 2020, blue hydrogen projects only had steam methane reforming [SMR] or autothermal reforming [ATR] to select from,” he adds. “Now, the SBHP provides a third option. It uses Shell gas partial oxidation technology and, in comparison with SMR and ATR, it captures carbon dioxide at higher pressures and at larger scales, which results in a lower levelised cost of hydrogen. With these advantages, I believe we will develop a highly competitive process design package for the Humber Hub.”

The Humber Hub missed out on the government shortlist for projects to link to ‘track-one’ clusters and eventual qualification for the first tranche of funding for CCUS in the mid-2020s. Uniper has indicated to Hydrogen Economist that it will look toward applying for ‘track-two’ status. The government has yet to release details on track-two clusters but has indicated it will aim to deploy these projects by 2030.

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Author: Polly Martin