Turquoise Hydrogen-Related System Summary
A Combined Turquoise Hydrogen System to Produce
Electricity, Hydrogen and Carbon Black from Natural Gas

Integrated ClimateTech (iClimateTech) along with its partners is seeking to build a Turquoise Hydrogen (hydrogen produced from natural gas along with carbon black) facility to produce electricity, hydrogen and carbon black from natural gas as well as add more processes in subsequent phases.  Shown below are the two planned phases:

1) Phase 1 Project: A Turquoise Hydrogen system to produce electricity, hydrogen and carbon black from natural gas.  Given below are key features of the planned combined system to produce electricity, hydrogen and carbon black from natural gas:

  1. A project location on Indigenous land with stranded natural gas.
  2. A plant to convert natural gas to hydrogen and carbon black.
  3. Hydrogen buffer storage tanks to temporarily store hydrogen.
  4. Hydrogen fuel cells or turbines to produce electricity.
  5. Energy storage system to store power for up to 11 hours
  6. An automatic power management system that supplies electricity to the grid only when the purchase price is higher than average.
  7. An overall system management package.

Given below is a summary of the overall system management package that would do the following:

  1. Control the system that operates the process to produce hydrogen and carbon black from natural gas
  2. Monitor and control the amount of hydrogen in the buffer tanks.
  3. Control the power generation system fueled by hydrogen (fuel cells or turbines).
  4. Control the system that operates the energy storage system.
  5. Determine when to supply electricity to the grid (when the purchase price from customers is higher than average during the day)

The total cost of a Turquoise hydrogen system producing 6 tonnes/day of hydrogen and power generation is in the range of CA$110 million before tax credits.

3) Phase 2 Project: Add renewable energy and energy storage to the Phase 1 project (Turquoise Hydrogen and power generation system) to produce reliable, lower-cost electricity, hydrogen and carbon black.  Below is a schematic showing this combination:

The solar farm that is part of the system would be combined with agricultural farming to maximize the utilization of the land.  For example, shown here is a solar farm combined with a sheep farm. 

Given below are some articles and webpages about companies with Turquoise Hydrogen technologies:

  1. Ekona Power has a methane pyrolysis platform that converts natural gas into hydrogen and solid carbon.  Presentation by Chris Reid.
  2. C-Zero – US start-up to build turquoise-hydrogen pilot plant after securing funding from major energy players 
  3. KWI Polymers partners, Montreal, PQ, Canadian collaboration advances ‘turquoise’ hydrogen solution 
  4. Hycamite TCD Technologies Ltd, 67900 Kokkola, Finland, €25m for methane pyrolysis technology.  
  5. Pure Hydrogen Corporation, Australia.
  6. Innova Hydrogen
  7. Monolith Corp – Turquoise hydrogen leader awarded $1bn US government loan to expand commercial facilities tenfold.
  8. BASF (resistive heating of reactor walls).
  9. Hazer Group (solid iron ore catalyst).
  10. Transform Materials (low temperature).
  11. HiiROC – Clean Turquoise Hydrogen: a pathway to commercial readiness & UK first’ | Centrica to inject hydrogen made from methane pyrolysis into peaking gas plant
  12. Teknologi (UK & Nigeria) – Turquoise Hydrogen 
  13. InnoTech hosted a very informative course on ‘Turquoise Hydrogen Production Course’ on March 07, 2023. See: Turquois Hydrogen 
  14. Methane Pyrolysis: Unlocking the Potential of Turquoise Hydrogen Production, Reports by IDTechEx, 02 Jun, 2023
    1. Thermal: non-catalytic thermal decomposition using very high temperatures (1000-1400°C). Heating is supplied via the reactor walls or heat exchange tubes (if combustion is used). Companies developing this process include BASF (resistive heating of reactor walls) and Ekona Power heating by combustion of tail gases).
    2. Catalytic: thermocatalytic process that employs either a molten catalyst in a bubble column or catalyst particles in a fluidized bed reactor. Companies developing this process include C-Zero (molten salt catalyst) and Hazer Group (solid iron ore catalyst).
    3. Plasma: methane molecules are split by high-temperature plasma (via plasma torches) or microwave-generated low-temperature plasma. Companies developing this process include Monolith (high temperature) and Transform Materials (low temperature).
  15. Clean Turquoise Hydrogen: a pathway to commercial readiness, July 22, 2022 by Schalk Cloete
  16. To visit the page via a short link, click on this link: www.climatesan.org/thss