Haldor Topsoe, Lyngby, Denmark, said on Oct. 18 it will supply blue ammonia technology for Air Products’ $4.5 billion clean energy complex to be built in Ascension Parish, La. It is expected to be operational in 2026.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and Air Products Chairman, President, and CEO Seifi Ghasemi announced the project on Oct. 14. Air Products, Allentown, Pa., will build, own, and operate the project, which will produce over 750 million standard cubic feet per day (MMSCFD) of blue hydrogen.
The product will serve the existing Air Products hydrogen pipeline system, the largest hydrogen pipeline system in the world, stretching more than 700 miles from Galveston Bay to New Orleans. The network can supply customers with more than 1.6 billion cubic feet of hydrogen per day from approximately 25 production facilities, including blue hydrogen from Air Products’ Port Arthur, Texas, facility.
The balance of the hydrogen will be converted to blue ammonia that will be transported around the world and converted back to blue hydrogen for transportation and other markets.
The project will create 170 permanent jobs with a total annual payroll of $15.9 million, and more than 2,000 construction jobs over three years. It represents Air Products’ largest-ever investment in the U.S.
The blue products will be produced utilizing hydrocarbons as a feedstock, with the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the production process captured for permanent sequestration. Air Products said the Port Arthur facility has captured approximately one million tons of CO2 annually since 2013, with the CO2 transported via pipeline and utilized for enhanced oil recovery operations.
Air Products said approximately 95 percent of the CO2 generated at the new facility will be captured, compressed, and transported safely by pipeline to multiple inland sequestration sites located along a pipeline corridor extending up to 35 miles to the east of the new production facility.
Over five million mt/y of CO2 will be permanently sequestered in geologic pore space secured from the State of Louisiana, approximately one mile beneath the surface. Air Products has already received approval from the State Mineral and Energy Board, which is part of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, for the permanent sequestration of the CO2.
Air Products will provide all of the complex’s products – blue hydrogen and co-products (liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen, and liquid argon) – to customers in the U.S. and around the world.
The news follows Air Products’ announcement in June 2021 of a C$1.3 billion net-zero hydrogen energy complex in Edmonton, Alberta (GM June 18, p. 34), and its previous announcement of the $5 billion green hydrogen/ammonia production facility joint venture in NEOM, Saudi Arabia (GM July 10, 2020), powered by renewable energy for the production and export of carbon-free hydrogen to global markets.
Haldor Topsoe and Air Products already have an established collaboration, with Haldor Topsoe delivering technology for Gulf Coast Ammonia’s world-scale ammonia facility (3,600 mt/d) in Texas City, Texas (GM May 15, 2020), and the NEOM project in Saudi Arabia with a capacity of 650 mt/d of green hydrogen that will be converted into 3,500 mt/d of green ammonia.
Haldor Topsoe will provide its SynCOR™ blue hydrogen technology to Air Products’ recently announced blue hydrogen complex in Alberta.