H2 – Hydrogen Production


To improve the production of pure hydrogen from biogas or natural gas MACBETH will develop, build and demonstrate a novel reactor concept integrating hydrogen separation in situ during the reforming reaction in a single vessel under industrially relevant conditions. Here, biogas or natural gas methane will be converted to hydrogen at a much lower temperature compared with a conventional system resulting in an increase of the overall process efficiency and a strong decrease of volumes and auxiliary heat management units. The novel membrane reactor system will greatly simplify plant layouts resulting in a decrease of CAPEX (much less components/reactors) and OPEX (raising efficiency from 59% to more than 70% (for biogas)). Compared with any other membrane reactor project in the past (most advanced TRL 6), MACBETH will demonstrate:

  • the membrane reactor will run at a much larger scale (>150 membranes implemented in a single fluidized bed membrane reactor)
  • small-scale hydrogen production, very close to a commercial unit, paving the way towards a market exploitation of the reactor concept
  • the reactor system will operate for more than 8000 h (for each of the H2 demo plants).

Equipped with an integrated advanced control system which improves the systems flexibility towards biogas composition, the reactor will be tested in a real biogas plant (H2a) at ENGIE and in a plant for natural gas (NG) (H2b) in the CNH2 facilities located in Puertollano (Spain).  

Figure: Plant Site for natural gas (NG) (H2b) in the CNH2 facilities located in Puertollano (Spain)