July 28, 2023
Courtney Pedersen, Staff writer
 

Linde to bring $1.8B hydrogen facility to Beaumont

Linde, an industrial gases and engineering company hosted a vendor fair for its new $1.8 billion Beaumont hydrogen plant July 27, 2023 at the Beaumont Event Centre. Courtney Pedersen/The Enterprise

Within the next few months, Southeast Texas will begin to see the signs of construction on a $1.8 billion complex that will produce hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen.

Linde, a global industrial gas and engineering company, will building its new "Clean Hydrogen Project" in Beaumont on Twin City Highway South. The complex will be integrated into Linde's existing Gulf Coast industrial gas infrastructure.

"The project is to build clean energy and infrastructure for the Beaumont area," Plant Manager Jacob Keeling said. "What that means is we're putting in a hydrogen facility that has low carbon intensity."

The company held a vendor fair Thursday at the Downtown Event Centre to look for civil, mechanical, building, general facilities/supplies, instrumentation and temporary site facilities contractors.

Keeling said the fair is meant to encourage collaboration between the company and local community.

"Beaumont has a wealth of a talent that we're trying to tap into because there's just so much industry already here," he said. "We're looking for opportunities to connect with the local community and the local contractors to try to really make the best project that we can together."

Sanitary Supply Company Vice President David Henderson said his company attended the event to make contacts in the industry that uses their types of janitorial and safety supply products.

RELATED: OCI enters partnership for its new Beaumont facility

Henderson said Sanitary Supply Company usually attends three to four vendor fairs and they are typically "really successful."

"We're already working with OCI right next door to these guys and with the contractors," Henderson said. "(Linde) made a commitment to work with local vendors, and we've been in business here in Beaumont since 1937. So, we're pretty local and just making our presence known with these folks."

Linde Gases U.S. Director of Marketing and Strategy Brian Kelleher said the company will create about 1,200 jobs during construction and 30 permanent positions.

The facility will supply hydrogen and nitrogen to OCI's 1.1 million ton per annum blue ammonia plant in Beaumont, according to the company.

"Linde will supply OCI with clean hydrogen by sequestering more than 1.7 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year," the project's information sheet states. "Linde will also use its extensive pipeline network to provide clean hydrogen to existing and new customers in the U.S. Gulf Coast, addressing the increasing demand from companies to decarbonize their operations."

Clean hydrogen has no universally-accepted definition, however, and largely refers to hydrogen produced with lower emissions than fossil fuel-based methods, as opposed to hydrogen with no or extremely-low emissions.

Linde's process is low carbon intensity and uses natural gas, as well as hydrogen and oxygen, according to Keeling.

RELATED: Over $2B hydrogen-based blue ammonia facility is coming to town

The process of producing hydrogen from natural gas is typically referred to as "blue hydrogen" and carries the potential for methane leakage, among other potential emissions. However, the blue hydrogen process from autothermal reforming -- splitting the hydrogen from methane, like Linde employs -- has shown to create the least greenhouse gas emissions of other blue hydrogen processes, according to a study from University of Alberta researchers that appeared in Energy Conversion and Management.

"Most people who use this don't have a way to capture the carbon that's removed, we do," Keeling said. "We are able to capture most of that carbon, and that's what makes us low carbon intensity, which means that we don't release pollutants into the environment."

Linde also will make nitrogen and oxygen at the plant.

"The atmosphere content of nitrogen is like roughly 79% percent," Keeling said. "We use cold temperatures to basically separate out the nitrogen and the oxygen."

Keeling said OCI will also be it's main customer for nitrogen. However, there will be "a lot of other customers" that will be tapping into the nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen through their pipeline.

"There's a lot of infrastructure in the area that's looking for clean hydrogen, and so we'll be able to provide it to the infrastructure as well," Keeling said.

Construction is expected to begin early in the fourth quarter of 2023 and be completed by the end of 2025, according to the company.