Industrial Gas Supply for Energy and Decarbonization Applications
Powering the world forward to a more sustainable future
Most everywhere you look, Linde gases and applications are hard at work helping to improve the sustainability of a variety of fuels. The improvements range from supplying hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles, producing lower carbon liquefied natural gas (LNG), and removing sulfur from gasoline and diesel. This also includes building and operating world-class oxygen supply systems for gasification and syngas production. All these applications and others support production of sustainable fuels and chemicals like renewable diesel, biogas-based LNG, and the next generation of biofuels. While Linde gases are critical to meeting today's energy needs, they are even more important to sustainably meeting the demands of tomorrow. That’s why we continue to enable a cleaner future by developing industrial gas applications that help customers improve operating costs and productivity, optimize energy efficiency, improve quality, enhance environmental performance and meet future needs.
Hydrogen helps meet future needs
Hydrogen has a wide variety of uses across industries as a whole and those uses are expanding every day as we look to fuel the economy. We are moving from helping clean-up traditional fuels to new energy alternatives to decarbonize our fuel mix. Hydrogen at varying carbon intensities fuels a small but growing number of the cars we drive and soon more of the trucks that haul goods. Beyond transportation fuels, lower-carbon intensity hydrogen has the capacity to store energy for back-up power, fuel lower carbon electricity that powers homes and business, and has the potential to transform how a variety of industries operate by lowering and, eventually, eliminating carbon emissions from their production processes. Linde has announced U.S. production capacity for green hydrogen in California. Read more
Alternative Fuel Potential for Transportation
A low-carbon intensity hydrogen supply helps power vehicles responsibly. We supply lower-carbon intensity hydrogen to companies powering vehicles that can run on alternative fuels. Transitioning to alternative fuels in the aviation, automotive, fleet trucks and buses, and material handling industries paves the way for companies to reduce their carbon footprints.
See how we serve related industries.
Industrial gases for the energy industry
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the energy source in fuel cells. Hydrogen can be burned directly in gas turbines to produce carbon-free electrical power and is used in the production of biofuels. It is also key in chemical processing and can improve utility generator-cooling performance.
Oxygen
Utilizing oxygen in the place of air can increase performance and capital efficiency in many industries. It is often used in boilers and process heaters, industrial fermenters and gasification processes to improve productivity. Oxygen also helps reduce NOX and SOX emissions.
Carbon Dioxide
Carbon dioxide is used by the plants that are the source of biomass for energy capture. CO2 is also a reactant in several chemical processes for the production of important building blocks.
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is used as a blanketing agent to separate sensitive products and processes from air. It is also used as a purging agent in piping and equipment to prevent contamination.
THINK LINDE, THINK HYDROGEN: GREENING UP AS YOU DECARBONIZE
The Linde Green option
Today, most hydrogen is produced through a process called steam methane reforming where natural gas is converted into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen is then compressed or liquefied using power from the electric grid in order to facilitate distribution. Although energy efficient, this production method inherently produces carbon dioxide as a by-product. Linde has invested in technologies to produce hydrogen through a variety of pathways beyond reforming natural gas that results in hydrogen with a lower carbon intensity.
Hydrogen as vehicle fuel
There is a global consensus that there is a need to lower carbon emissions in order to combat climate change. The transportation sector represents the largest contributor of greenhouses gases and, as such, reducing carbon emissions must be addressed. This need will only compound with the growing population. In other words, as population grows, more people drive or move from place to place.
Linde has been providing hydrogen and technical expertise to the fuel-cell industry for over a decade. As this technology evolves and matures, we are even better suited to supply the hydrogen and fueling systems your facility requires.
Hydrogen for power, heating and utilities
Hydrogen enables utilities to make use of excess renewable energy that could be stored long-term for seasonal use or sold to other industries. Because it is an energy carrier, a tremendous amount of energy utilizing hydrogen in large quantities for long periods of time can be used later in fuel cells to generate electricity, power and heat. It is also an effective energy source for backup power systems used for portable power.
Biofuel Refining
Biofuels can be used as replacement for fossil fuels providing a lower carbon transportation fuel option.
Chemicals
Hydrogen is used to produce synthetic liquid fuels from biomass resulting in a lower carbon footprint.
Electronics
Semiconductor, display, LED & photovoltaic applications to lower carbon intensity.
Glass
Blends of traditional fuels with hydrogen may result in a reduction of carbon emissions.
Heat Treating
Hydrogen delivers reproducible benefits for brazing, sintering and metal hardening processes.
Steel
Utilizing a Tuyere air nozzle with added hydrogen as a co-injection gas reduces carbon emissions.
LINDE Industrial Applications for the Energy Industry
Oxygen-Enhanced Combustion
Our patented Oxygen-Enhanced Combustion applications can help lower NOx emissions in your industrial boilers, furnaces and fired heaters by up to 70%. When burning high-moisture high-ash fuels, this technology can increase output to nameplate capacity, while stabilizing and improving flame performance. Regardless of the application, Linde’s Oxygen-Enhanced Combustion is designed to help you generate cleaner power, faster.
Gasification and Syngas
With more than 100 years of experience designing, building and operating commercial air separation units, Linde has the technology and world-class engineering talent required to deliver the most efficient, reliable and competitively-priced oxygen supply for your gasification needs. We also offer partial oxidation (POx) technologies for improving production and quality of syngas from natural gas and other carbon sources ranging from coal to biomass to municipal waste.
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)
Utilizing the heat removing properties of cryogenic liquid nitrogen, Linde systems convert natural gas to LNG. Availability of Liquefied Natural Gas provides an economic fuel alternative to remote land-based and marine use points
Nitrogen Stripping
Remove harmful dissolved gases from your process fluids with our nitrogen stripping application. Together we can tailor a system that will meet your purity requirements.
Direct Oxygen Injection
Linde’s patented Direct Oxygen Injection technology improves oxygen transfer rates, production capacity and productivity. It also reduces foaming and flooding in your oxygen-limited aerobic fermentation and propagation reactors.
VOC Treatment & Recovery
Using liquid nitrogen as an indirect refrigerant, this application can condense Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in your process streams, returning valuable products back to your business while utilizing the nitrogen for purging and blanketing operations.
Terminal Services
Linde has industry experience working with terminal operators to keep facilities operating with a focus on safety and efficiency. This helps terminal operations take advantage of cost-effective improvements.
Hydrogen for Fuel Cells
Linde has been providing hydrogen fuel and related technical support to fuel-cell developers and vehicle fleets for over a decade. And as the technologies become even more widespread, we are even better suited to supply the hydrogen and fueling systems your facility requires.
Industrial services for the energy industry and decarbonization applications
Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Sequestration
Several different technologies can be used to capture CO₂ at the source (the facility emitting CO₂). They fall into three categories:
- Post-combustion carbon capture (the primary method used in existing power plants)
- Pre-combustion carbon capture (largely used in industrial processes)
- Oxy-fuel combustion systems.
For post-combustion carbon capture, CO₂ is separated from the exhaust of a combustion process. There are commercially available pre-combustion capture technologies used by industrial facilities; however, for power plants, pre-combustion capture is still in early stages. This technology involves gasifying fuel and separating out the CO₂. It may be less costly than other options; however, it can only be built into new facilities to retrofit an existing facility for pre-combustion capture would be prohibitively costly. For oxy-fuel combustion, fuel is burned in a nearly pure-oxygen environment, rather than regular air, which results in a more concentrated stream of CO₂ emissions, which is easier to capture.
Once the CO₂ is captured, it is compressed into a fluid and transported to an appropriate storage site.
Carbon Capture
Linde's oxyfuel technology is an ideal way to increase the efficiency of combustion processes in new power plants. Post-combustion capture is targeted specifically at flue gas in existing power plants, typically using a solvent to chemically absorb the CO2 from the flue gases after the combustion process. Many chemical applications also rely on CO2 scrubbing to remove carbon from the process.Utilization
The captured carbon dioxide gas can be further purified and liquefied for commercial use – for example, as food-grade CO2 for the cryogenic freezing of food and production of carbonated beverages, as a feedstock for the production of commodities like methanol or urea, or as gaseous carbon dioxide in greenhouse atmospheres.Sequestration
Carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon dioxide in underground caverns. Typically, carbon dioxide is captured from an industrial source, such as steel or cement production, or an energy-related source, such as a power plant or natural gas processing facility and injected into porous, underground, geological rock formations for long-term storage.We do more than provide industrial gases and applications to the energy industry. Linde can also assist with decarbonization efforts. In total, we will help you to optimize every step of your process. From consultation to implementation and use, we offer a range of industrial services that help you monitor and manage your gas supply so you can focus on being as productive and efficient as possible.