Process Reconfiguration and Intensification: An Emerging Opportunity Enabling Efficient Carbon Capture and Low-cost Blue Hydrogen Production

Low-carbon hydrogen can play a significant role in decarbonizing the world. Hydrogen is currently mainly produced from fossil sources, requiring additional CO2 capture to decarbonize, which energy intense and costly. In a recent Green Energy & Environment paper, Cheng and Di et al. proposed a novel integration process referred to as SECLRHC to generate high-purity H2 by in-situ separation of H2 and CO without using any additional separation unit. Theoretically, the proposed process can essentially achieve the separation of C and H in gaseous fuel via a reconfigured reaction process, and thus attaining high-purity hydrogen of ∼99%, as well as good carbon and hydrogen utilization rates and economic feasibility. It displays an optimistic prospect that industrial decarbonization is not necessarily expensive, as long as a suitable CCS measure can be integrated into the industrial manufacturing process.