MHI’s CO2 capture technology for low-carbon hydrogen plant

Japanese engineering company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has signed a license agreement with its US counterpart KBR to provide CO2 capture technology for a low-carbon Hydrogen Production Plant 2 (HPP2) being established in Cheshire in northwest England.

The HPP2 project, owned by Essar Group’s EET Hydrogen, will be constructed at the Stanlow Manufacturing Complex, which hosts one of the UK’s leading refineries. For this project, KBR will provide hydrogen production process technology and the front-end engineering design (FEED).

Under the new agreement, MHI will license its Advanced KM CDR Process, a CO2 capture technology developed in collaboration with Kansai Electric Power, and provide the process design package (PDP) for the new post-combustion CO2 capture plant.

The planned HPP2 will have an annual hydrogen production capacity of nearly 230,000 tons, which is expected to be the UK’s largest-scale low-carbon hydrogen plant when it begins operation. The project is also described as a key pillar of the HyNet carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) cluster. The captured CO2 will be permanently sequestered into depleted gas fields under the sea in Liverpool Bay.

The HyNet cluster, where EET Hydrogen is leading hydrogen production projects, was selected by the UK Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) as an initial cluster along with the East Coast cluster.

HPP2 augments the Hydrogen Production Plant 1 (HPP1) scheduled for construction as part of the large-scale low-carbon hydrogen plant infrastructure planned by EET Hydrogen in the HyNet cluster. HPP1 will have an initial production capacity of 350 MW and will capture around 600,000 tons of CO2 a year.

Combined with the HPP2, the hydrogen hub will enable local industrial and power generation businesses to switch from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy, helping to reduce the North West’s carbon emissions by 2.5 million tons every year.