In the United Kingdom, food giant Unilever recently started using hydrogen instead of natural gas to make consumer products.
Detergent brand Persil will now be made (partly) with blue hydrogen. This is hydrogen produced from natural gas whereby the CO2 is captured and stored.
The trial is intended to show that the food industry can switch to hydrogen as a fuel for chemical processes. Now parent company Unilever still uses natural gas for heat processes. By switching to hydrogen, the process can eventually become more sustainable.
Unilever is working with two British hydrogen companies for the technology and the raw material. Various trials will take place. The most eye-catching is the 100 percent hydrogen trial. On the scale on which Persil produces, full hydrogen has never been used before, and the trial should show whether there are any problems when you replace natural gas (which contains a relatively large amount of energy per cubic meter).
The hydrogen comes from HyNet, a company that wants to supply “low carbon” hydrogen. Low carbon in this case means that the CO2 released when producing hydrogen from natural gas is stored underground.
The project is part of Unilever’s overarching goal: production must be free of CO2 emissions by 2030. “Since 2015, we have already reduced emissions by 64 percent,” said Madeleine McLeod, director of Port Sunlight (as the plant site is called) in a press release. “To achieve zero emissions we are looking at new technologies and that is why this trial is so exciting.”
