PetroChina's Huabei Petrochemical ships first hydrogen fuel cargo

PetroChina's Huabei Petrochemical in North China shipped its first hydrogen cargo to the state-owned company's refilling outlets in Beijing, the plant said on its official WeChat platform Dec. 8, signaling the oil giant's intentions to boost its hydrogen fuel supply capability as it looks to transition to clean energy alternatives.

Huabei Petrochemical, which has a refining capacity of 10 million mt/year, said the cargo was produced from its new project that purifies hydrogen byproducts during the refining process. Its purification unit has a capacity of 500 cum/hour, according to the plant.

The new facility takes the number of PetroChina's hydrogen purification projects to 19. The projects are located in Circum-Bohai Sea, Shanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region, Southern China, Southwestern China, Xinjiang, Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces, according to the plant's WeChat platform.

These projects produce blue hydrogen from the oil giant's current refining facilities with the CCUS technology to meet hydrogen fuel demand from the public transportation sector.

PetroChina has built four refilling outlets with a combined supply capacity of 5,500 kg/day in Beijing at the Winter Olympics site.

The outlets can refill nearly one thousand hydrogen-fueled vehicles per day that can run 2 million km. China's hydrogen-fueled vehicles are mainly used in the public transportation sector.

PetroChina currently produces over 2.6 million mt/year of hydrogen.

The oil giant has set up a hydrogen research institute and joined the China Hydrogen Alliance to develop blue and green hydrogen supply chain for production, storage, transportation and refilling outlets, the company said.