Air Liquide Adding Major New H2 Production Unit for Neste NExBTL Plant in Rotterdam

25 June 2008

In Rotterdam, Air Liquide has won a long-term contract to supply hydrogen to Neste Oil’s NExBTL Renewable Diesel plant. (Earlier post.) To meet Neste’s requirements, Air Liquide is investing in a new world-scale hydrogen production unit (Steam Methane Reformer, SMR) with a production capacity of 130,000 m³/hour.

This represents an increase of more than 30% of Air Liquide’s existing hydrogen production capacity in the basin. The new SMR unit, to be designed and built by Lurgi teams who joined the Group in 2007, is due to start up in 2011. Group investment amounts to €160 million (US$249 million).

Neste Oil’s NExBTL process NExBTL uses the high-pressure hydrotreatment of fatty acids to produce a pure hydrocarbon fuel (bio-hydrocarbon).

As well as supplying hydrogen to the new Neste Oil plant in Rotterdam, the unit will be connected to Air Liquide’s Northern European hydrogen network which currently includes eight hydrogen units in operation and more than 900 km of pipeline.

The Rotterdam/Antwerp (the Netherlands-Belgium) basin is the largest chemical and petrochemical basin in Europe, representing 12% of the entire European refining capacity. The hydrogen market in this basin continues to witness sustained growth of +20% per year. Air Liquide has invested more than €800 million (US$1.2 billion) in this basin in the last 12 years.

Air Liquide has increased its worldwide production capacity of hydrogen by more than 50% over the past three years. The Group is now operating 200 hydrogen units worldwide, of which 40 are large units, and operates the leading hydrogen network in the world with more than 1,800 km of pipeline globally.