Partial oxidation for blue hydrogen production: Techno-economic assessment of low-temperature carbon capture technologies

Hydrogen produced by partial oxidation (POx) integrated with carbon capture systems (CCS) remains critically underexplored compared to steam methane reforming (SMR), despite its inherent advantages of higher natural gas conversion and reduced external heating requirements. This study fills that gap by presenting the first comprehensive environmental and techno-economic assessment of POx coupled with cryogenic carbon capture (CCC) and amine-based absorption (ABS) at capture rates of 95% and 98%, at a production scale of 600 MWth. Six hydrogen production configurations are evaluated: a baseline SMR, unabated POx, and four POx-CCS variants (POx-CCC-95, POx-CCC-98, POx-ABS-95, POx-ABS-98) not previously assessed together in the literature. Performance is benchmarked across net efficiency, specific CO 2 emissions, capital and operating costs, levelised cost of hydrogen (LCOH), cost of CO 2 avoided (CCA), and investment payback periods. Our findings reveal, for the first time, that POx-CCC integrated systems show higher efficiency (∼59%) than amine-based CCS (∼55–56%). Integrating CCS cuts emissions from 93.91 gCO 2 eq/MJ (H 2 ) in unabated POx to 18.66–21.20 gCO 2 eq/MJ (H 2 ) for CCC and 27.34–29.12 gCO 2 eq/MJ (H 2 ) for amine-based, with only CCC (at 98% capture rate) meeting the UK Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard, a regulatory threshold not previously evaluated in this technology context. We further demonstrate that CCS integration increases the LCOH by 13–20% relative to unabated POx. Sensitivity analysis identifies natural-gas price as the main driver of LCOH, while plant cost most strongly affects CCA. Meanwhile, increasing carbon price reduces the CCA across all CCS cases.