Air Products expects 'first-mover' advantage with ambitious Saudi Arabia hydrogen project

Air Products expects its announced "world-scale" green hydrogen project in Saudi Arabia will give the industrial gas company a "first-mover advantage" in the global race to decarbonize, a company official said Sept. 30.

The project, announced in July, is expected to produce 650 mt/d of green hydrogen, the majority of which will be converted into ammonia for export. It is expected to be operational by 2025.

"Air Products was the first company to get an onsite hydrogen production deal (at a refinery), and people thought it was crazy, but once you get that first deal, it's easier to get the second, then the third, and we still have that leading position," said Simon Moore, vice president of investor relations, corporate relations and sustainability at Air Products, speaking at Morgan Stanley's virtual Hydrogen Symposium.

"Now we turn to this market, and it's very different, but not only do we get that first-mover advantage but we are giving confidence to the world, that no kidding, this can be done," Moore added.

While Air Products has been producing hydrogen for nearly 30 years, "it's been amazing how far things have come in a year," he said.

The Saudi Arabia project is a $5 billion investment of which Air Products will back a third, along with its other partners ACWA Power and NEOM, a Saudi-backed investment firm that is building an eponymous "smart city" in the northwest part of the country along the Red Sea.

As envisioned, ACWA will build out solar and wind farms, which will supply power to electrolyzers developed by ThyssenKrupp. The renewable electricity will also power a desalinization plant to feed the electrolyzers, as well as a direct air capture plant to harvest nitrogen.

A reactor, using Haldor Topsoe technology, will then convert the hydrogen into ammonia, which will be liquified, loaded onto purpose-built ammonia carriers and exported, at first mostly for hydrogen mobility markets, Moore said.

When those vessels arrive at their destination, Moore expects the ammonia will be unloaded and then trucked to hydrogen refueling stations, where it will be disassociated to yield the hydrogen. Moore said Air Products expects trucking to be more economical than a hydrogen pipeline.

"The target market for this is buses and trucks," Moore said. "The heavier the vehicle, the longer the haul, makes it better for hydrogen, because the comparable weight of batteries becomes significant."

Moore noted that the NEOM plant will be able to provide the daily fuel requirements for roughly 20,000 buses, but the bigger prize is the global bus market, which numbers roughly 3 million.

"To be honest, this is one of the most exciting parts," Moore said. "This changes the game for hydrogen as a transportation fuel."

Jennifer Beach, a director of the US-based Ammonia Energy Association, explained that ammonia is one of the most efficient ways to transport hydrogen, as ammonia can be liquified at minus 33 degrees Celsius as opposed to minus 253 C for hydrogen. It also makes more sense economically when it comes to trucking, she said.

Ammonia is produced by combining hydrogen and nitrogen in a reactor which typically uses an iron-based catalyst, but research is underway to use cobalt or ruthenium catalysts, which would allow the ammonia synthesis process to increase flexibility, Beach said.

Ammonia is broken apart in a disassociator, also known as a cracker, that uses high heat – either from electricity or natural gas -- and a nickel catalyst to produce hydrogen, which is captured and stored, and nitrogen, which is vented back into the atmosphere. More efficient cobalt and ruthenium catalysts are being researched for this application as well, Beach said.

Beach is also the chief operating officer at Colorado-based Starfire Energy, which manufactures ammonia synthesis systems that run on variable power.

"Our first commercial product, the one people want, is 50 mt/day of ammonia," Beach said. "The [NEOM project] is 3,300 mt/d, but if you can place your synthesis system close to renewable energy, you avoid all the infrastructure to move the electrons around."

Ammonia can also be used to produce electricity in a fuel cell. Beach said she expects the shipping industry to be one of the early adopters of this technology, as it allows a vessel to not only ship ammonia but also use a portion of it as fuel.

Other ammonia markets could also include high heat applications, Beach said. She noted that the global ammonia industry is roughly 180 million mt annually, of which 80% is used to produce fertilizer.