State Secretary Atsma Inaugurates World-Scale Hydrogen Plant in Rotterdam Botlek

Air Products (Netherlands) and ExxonMobil celebrated the start-up of a new world-scale hydrogen production plant in Rotterdam. Joop Atsma, State Secretary for Infrastructure and the Environment, Mayor Aboutaleb of Rotterdam and Hans Smits, CEO Port of Rotterdam, participated in the official ceremony. Integrating ExxonMobil’s refinery with Air Products new hydrogen plant will lead to a 15% improvement in energy efficiency and reduce related CO2 emissions by 200.000 tons per year.

The Air Products plant uses ExxonMobil refinery’s excess gas to produce hydrogen. The refinery uses hydrogen for the desulphurisation of oil products and in the manufacture of petrochemicals. The new plant uses the most advanced processes and technologies which makes the hydrogen production considerably more efficient than the previous hydrogen supply to the refinery. The hydrogen plant also delivers steam to the refinery. The synergy in the production processes of the two plants will improve overall energy efficiency by more than 15%.

Air Products, in conjunction with Technip – its main contractor on the project – began construction of the new hydrogen plant in June 2010. Maria van der Hoeven, Minister of Economic Affairs at that time, officially started the ground breaking. The start-up of the new hydrogen plant took place in December 2011. It took approximately 1 million man-hours to build the plant. The construction was completed with more than 450 people working at the site at one time, with 8 different languages spoken. Although there were challenging circumstances, the worker’s safety was managed proactively and successfully.