TotalEnergies and Air Liquide innovate to produce renewable, low carbon hydrogen at the Grandpuits zero crude platform
TotalEnergies and Air Liquide are innovating to produce and valorize renewable, low carbon hydrogen at the Grandpuits zero crude platform, according to the company's release.
Under a long-term contract committing TotalEnergies to purchase the hydrogen produced for the needs of its platform, Air Liquide will invest over €130 million in the construction and operation of a new unit producing hydrogen. This unit will partly use biogas from the biorefinery built by TotalEnergies and will be delivered with Air Liquide’s carbon capture technology CryocapTM. These innovations will prevent emissions amounting to 150,000 tons of CO2 a year compared to current processes. TotalEnergies’ biorefinery will use the unit’s hydrogen to produce sustainable aviation fuel.
In line with the two companies’ shared ambition to get to net zero by 2050, the project includes sustainable and circular innovations:
The new hydrogen production unit, with the capacity to produce over 20,000 tons a year will produce hydrogen that is partly renewable, thanks to the recycling of residual biogas from the Grandpuits biorefinery, in place of the natural gas that is normally used.
This unit will be delivered with a carbon capture technology, allowing it to help reduce the platform’s carbon footprint, by capturing over 110,000 tons of CO2 a year for reuse in food and industrial applications.
Most of the unit’s renewable, low carbon hydrogen will be used by the biorefinery itself, to produce sustainable aviation fuel, but it could also be used to support sustainable mobility in the Ile-de-France region.
Commissioned in 1966, Total's Grandpuits-Bailly-Carrois refinery was for a long time the only refinery in the Paris region. In September 2020, TotalEnergies launched a project to convert the site, in line with its strategy to become carbon neutral by 2050. This zero-crude project, with a total investment of more than 500 million euros, is based on the development of several future-oriented activities in the field of biomass, renewable energies, and the circular economy: chemical recycling of plastic waste, production of biosourced and biodegradable bioplastics, production of biofuels for the aviation sector, construction of a solar farm and electricity storage by batteries. The start-up of these new units will begin in 2022, and they should all be operational by 2025.
TotalEnergies is a global multi-energy company that produces and markets energies: oil and biofuels, natural gas and green gases, renewables and electricity.
Air Liquide is present in 75 countries with approximately 66,400 employees and serves more than 3.8 million customers and patients.