Novel Electrified Sorption Enhanced Reforming Process for Blue Hydrogen Production

Abstract

Sorption Enhanced Reforming (SER) emerges as a promising solution for the deployment of blue hydrogen and offers the flexibility to accommodate future green feedstocks. This study assesses the techno-economic feasibility of implementing electrified reactors for the endothermic sorbent regeneration step in SER-based hydrogen production plants, introducing the novel electrified sorption enhanced reforming (eSER) process. The analysis is conducted by integrating a 1-D dynamic heterogeneous model of an adiabatic fixed bed reactor into a process model of the complete plant. A natural gas-based hydrogen production plant with 30000 Nm3/h capacity is considered, simulating five different cases, two of which with advanced plant configurations designed to capture more than 90% of the feed carbon. Evaluating a set of key performance indicators that covers technical, environmental, and economic aspects of the process, these simulated cases are benchmarked against existing studies utilizing conventional and state of the art steam methane reforming with carbon capture technology from literature. The findings highlight the remarkable performance of eSER, achieving specific electric consumption of 12-14 kWh/kgH2 and natural gas to H2 conversion efficiency exceeding 100% calculated on chemical energy basis. For the advanced configurations, CO2 capture rates of 90.3 and 96.6% and levelized cost of hydrogen of 2.4-2.6 €/kgH2 have been obtained.