Utility Achieves Industry-First Hydrogen Production Using Steel Manufacturing Off-Gases

HOUSTON, March 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Utility, the leader in affordable, reliable, and clean hydrogen solutions that drive a profitable energy transition for hard-to-abate industries worldwide, today announced the successful operation of the company's H2Gen® system at a major steel plant in North America.

Utility's H2Gen system successfully produced the world's first hydrogen using steel plant off-gas (blast furnace gas) in an elegant single process step under actual site conditions. Additionally, this marks the industry's first successful implementation of a system that can produce clean hydrogen from water without the need for electricity.

The H2Gen system is now proven as the leading economic clean hydrogen platform solving the steel industry's significant clean energy challenges. It is a solution that is commercially available, cost-effective, offers a profitable pathway to a clean energy transition, and easily integrates with existing assets.

H2Gen system installed in steel plant

>> In Other News: dynaCERT Prepares Completion of 1,000 HydraGEN™ HG1 Units

Steel Production and Energy Challenges

Steel production is vital to industrial progress, but it is also one of the world's most energy-intensive processes, facing significant energy transition hurdles in reducing its carbon footprint. These challenges include:

• Capital costs in the billions of dollars for alternative steelmaking technologies compared to the blast furnaces used in making most of the steel globally.

• Limited space and infrastructure constraints for making economic on-site clean hydrogen that can reduce the carbon footprint of existing steel plants.

• The need to balance sustainability with productivity and global competitiveness while lacking economic carbon capture solutions for the steel industry.

Breakthrough Solution: H2Gen System

Utility's H2Gen system offers a groundbreaking solution to these challenges by producing hydrogen from water using industrial off-gases, such as blast furnace gas. The H2Gen system enables on-site hydrogen production with a compact footprint while delivering enriched CO₂ at a single point for cost-effective carbon capture.

With more than 3,000 hours of successful operation at a major steel plant, H2Gen has demonstrated its ability to drive a cost-effective, scalable, reliable, and commercially ready energy transition pathway for heavy industries, including steel, biogas-to-hydrogen, chemicals, refining, upstream oil & gas, power, and hydrogen-powered data centers.

Real-World Project Results

• Hydrogen Production: The H2Gen system consistently produced hydrogen on-site without the need for electrical input to the reaction.

• Seamless Integration: Designed for compatibility and operational simplicity, the modular, factory-built H2Gen system integrates with existing steel plant processes with minimal pre- and post-gas treatment, enhancing operational efficiency.

• Robust Performance: The system demonstrated significant flexibility, handling a wide variety of feed gas conditions, and could restart in less than 15 minutes after feed gas outage events.

• Cost-Effective and Scalable Solution: By minimizing operating and capital costs with a very small onsite footprint and modular scalability, H2Gen provides a practical, economic pathway to clean hydrogen production for decarbonizing steel manufacturing and other hard-to-abate industry sectors.

Industry Leadership and Future Growth

Parker Meeks, Chief Executive Officer of Utility, stated, “Decarbonizing heavy industries like steel, mobility, chemicals, refining, and power has been one of the toughest challenges in the energy transition — until now. Our successful deployment of H2Gen at a major steel plant proves we can deliver scalable, economic, clean hydrogen solutions that seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructure and assets.

"H2Gen is the only commercially viable solution for producing clean hydrogen in hard-to-abate industries like steelmaking. Utility is rapidly scaling to meet global demand, with strong momentum in steel, biogas-to-hydrogen for mobility, and beyond. Our H2Gen systems provide an economic, modular solution without the high costs and infrastructure barriers of alternative hydrogen technologies. With strong customer and partner momentum, including the recent ArcelorMittal funding and GH EnA Project Development announcements, we are accelerating the shift to clean hydrogen at scale.”

About Utility

Utility is a Houston, Texas-based off-gas-to-value company built specifically to enable economic decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors like mobility, steel, and others. Utility's H2Gen® system needs no electricity to utilize the remaining electrochemical energy contained in a wide range of dilute off-gases to produce high-purity clean hydrogen from water.

Utility's H2Gen systems are highly scalable, modular, smaller in size, and compatible with existing industrial processes and assets. H2Gen minimizes balance of plant, increases operational flexibility, and offers attractive benefits in total cost of ownership. Utility helps companies in hard-to-abate industries meet sustainability and business goals by reducing emissions, energy use, and waste profitably. Utility turns the environmental challenges of off-gases into competitive advantages as onsite energy, fuel, or feedstock.

About Ara Partners

Ara Partners is a global private equity and infrastructure firm dedicated to decarbonizing the industrial economy. Ara seeks to build, scale, and optimize companies with significant decarbonization impact across the industrial and manufacturing, chemicals and materials, energy efficiency and fuels, and food and agriculture sectors. The company operates from offices in Houston, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Dublin.

Ara Partners closed its third private equity fund in December 2023 with over $2.8 billion in new capital commitments. As of September 2024, Ara Partners had approximately $6.3 billion of assets under management.

For more information about Ara Partners, please visit www.arapartners.com.

SOURCE: Utility