Saudi Aramco said on Monday that it is working to sign an engineering agreement with the Danish company Topso, a leader in energy efficiency technologies, to build a low-carbon hydrogen pilot station in the Shaybah region of the Kingdom.
The plant will use renewable electricity in the steam-electric reforming of hydrocarbons to produce low-carbon hydrogen that will be used in power generation while extracting and sequestering the resulting carbon dioxide.
The giant Saudi company stated that the project, whose production capacity will reach six tons of hydrogen per day, will pave the way for a larger pilot plant with the ability to extract about 1,250 tons annually of carbon dioxide.
Aramco is also cooperating with Siemens Energy to develop a direct air extraction unit in Dhahran with an extraction capacity of up to 12 tons of carbon dioxide per year, and it is expected to be completed in 2024.
However, it succeeded in experimenting with a new technique to isolate carbon dioxide using local mineralization, which involves dissolving it in water and injecting it into volcanic rocks in Jizan, the Kingdom.
Aramco is also exploring expanding its renewable energy portfolio by tapping into geothermal energy, and has identified three potential areas on the western coast of the Kingdom.
