Process reconfiguration and intensification: An emerging opportunity enabling efficient carbon capture and low-cost blue hydrogen production

Low-carbon hydrogen can play a significant role in decarbonizing the world. Hydrogen is currently mainly produced from fossil sources, requiring additional CO₂ capture to decarbonize, which energy intense and costly. In a recent Green Energy & Environment paper, Cheng and Di et al. proposed a novel integration process referred to as SECLR_HC to generate high-purity H₂ by in-situ separation of H₂ and CO without using any additional separation unit. Theoretically, the proposed process can essentially achieve the separation of C and H in gaseous fuel via a reconfigured reaction process, and thus attaining high-purity hydrogen of ~99%, as well as good carbon and hydrogen utilization rates and economic feasibility. It displays an optimistic prospect that industrial decarbonization is not necessarily expensive, as long as a suitable CCS measure can be integrated into the industrial manufacturing process.