Technical and Environmental Assessment of H2 Production from Cracking Unit Off-Gas: The Terneuzen Case Study

Global warming is partly attributed to the off-gas from petrochemical plants. This can be utilized as a feed to produce hydrogen (H2) as a promising measure for battling climate change. In this study, we evaluated the potential for converting waste off-gas to H2 via steam-reforming technology accompanied by a carbon capture unit, through hybrid absorption/adsorption processes, to achieve a 99.99% hydrogen product. Also, the ReCiPe methodology was used for environmental analysis. The results showed that the equivalent greenhouse emissions when producing of 1 kg of H2 were 3.53 kg CO2-Eq, which were almost 2.5 times lower than those for H2 production without carbon capture, i.e., grey H2. Also, it was shown that using refinery gas as a reforming furnace fuel instead of conventional fuel oil led to about an 11% decrease in emissions.