Hassan Alqahtani

Dr. Hassan Alqahtani is Lead scientist in Saudi Aramco-EXPEC Advanced Research Center focusing on utilization of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology for sustainability applications. He holds a PhD Degree specializing in Materials Science from Flinders University in Australia. During his PhD period, Hassan has worked for 1.5 year at the National Institute of Material Science (NIMS) in Japan. He has multiple granted patents and high impact journal publications such as JACS; Advanced Materials and Nature communications. He served as technical committee advisory committee in both of King Faisal University (KFU) and King Fahad University (KFUPM) bridging the gap between academia and industry. He is technical editor in Society of Petroleum Engineering Journal (SPE Journals) for more than 4 years.

Participates in

TECHNICAL PROGRAMME | Energy Fuels and Molecules

Hydrogen (Green and Blue); Ammonia; Methanol
Forum 14 | Digital Poster Plaza 3
28
April
12:30 14:30
UTC+3
Hydrogen (H2) is set to become a dominant energy carrier to decarbonize global energy systems. The environmental footprint and cost of H2 strictly depend on the method by which it is obtained. Among the production routes, green H2 stands out by being produced by splitting water with renewable electricity, emitting almost no carbon emissions. In contrast to green H2, dark hydrogen depends on fossil-fuel feedstocks to be produced. The production methods include grey (natural-gas SMR without capture), brown (lignite gasification), and black (bituminous or anthracite coal gasification) hydrogen, which is the most utilized method to produce hydrogen today. Blue hydrogen stands in the middle; it is made via a steam methane reforming (SMR) process, but it integrates carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). The introduction of the CCUS is set to mitigate a significant portion of life-cycle emissions, taking advantage of existing natural-gas infrastructure while saving residual carbon footprint. This study uses a techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life-cycle assessments (LCA) to compare the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) and greenhouse-gas (GHG) footprints across these production routes. The results demonstrate that green hydrogen can reach the highest LCOH between  2.7 and 4.3 USD/kg, with extremely low carbon emissions between 0.6 and 4.34 kg of CO2 per kg of H2. Blue hydrogen with high-rate CCUS approaches ≈ 4 USD/kg, with moderate carbon emissions between 3.97 and 12 kg of CO2 per kg of H2. By contrast, black hydrogen offers a lower LCOH of 1.6–2.2 USD/kg but has the highest CO2 emissions, up to 20 kg of CO2 per kg of H2, making it an inexpensive but high-emission method. These comparative results are set to refine the hydrogen decarbonization roadmap. Under the framework set for the net zero target, future policy instruments such as carbon pricing, long-term offtake agreements, and export incentives can accelerate the scale-up of low-carbon hydrogen routes.

Co-author/s:

Mohammed Alyousef, Associate Petroleum Engineer, Saudi Aramco.

Luis Vazquez, Graduate Student, KAUST.
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