Energy company Equinor has awarded a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) contract for H2H Saltend to Linde Engineering, and an operation and maintenance service contract to BOC, according to a news release.
Linde Engineering together with BOC, both Linde companies, participated in a design competition to provide proposals for FEED with options for Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) and Operation and Maintenance for the first five years (subject to EPC option being exercised).
H2H Saltend is a 600 MW low carbon hydrogen production plant with carbon capture, the first of its kind and scale, helping to establish the Humber as an international hub for low carbon hydrogen. The plant design will use Linde Engineering’s hydrogen and air separation technologies, which will be combined with UK-based Johnson Matthey’s LCH™ technology. The plant will be operated and maintained by BOC, drawing on decades of operational experience in the region and across the UK.
Due to be operational by 2027 and sited at the energy intensive Saltend Chemicals Park, to the east of Hull, it will help to reduce the park’s emissions by up to one third. To achieve this, low carbon hydrogen will directly replace natural gas in several industrial facilities reducing the carbon intensity of their products, as well as being blended into natural gas at the Equinor and SSE Thermal’s on-site Saltend Power Station. The amount of CO2 stored will be around 890,000 tonnes per year equivalent to taking about 500,000 cars off the road annually.
H2H Saltend is the kick-starter project for the wider Zero Carbon Humber scheme, which will provide regional infrastructure from Easington to Drax. The infrastructure will transport hydrogen to industrial customers seeking to reduce their emissions whilst also capturing carbon dioxide for safe sub-sea storage as part of the East Coast Cluster. These proposals aim to make the Humber, currently the UK’s most carbon intensive industrial region, net-zero by 2040.
The project also forms part of Equinor’s wider ‘Hydrogen to Humber’ ambition to deliver 1.8 GW of low carbon hydrogen production within the region, nearly 20% of the UK’s national target.
