Improved Hydrogen Plant Design and Operations to Meet Today's Refining Challenges

摘要

With recent changes to reduce benzene and increase ethanol blending in gasoline, and the increased hydrotreating demands for diesel, refineries depend more than ever on reliable and efficient hydrogen plant operation. Hydrogen plants represent one of the largest single sources of CO_2 emissions in a typical refinery. For these reasons, improving hydrogen plant design and operation has become even more critical for refiners with pending regulations on green house gas emissions looming. Air Liquide and Lurgi have extensive expertise in the design, operation and engineering of hydrogen and syngas plants. Together, Air Liquide and Lurgi have developed innovative technologies to improve the efficiency, reliability, availability, and capital cost of hydrogen plants and to reduce CO_2 emissions. In this paper, we will review case studies from recent projects that Lurgi has executed for Air Liquide to demonstrate hydrogen plant improvements in the following areas: 1. handling of typical refinery feedstocks for hydrogen plants; 2. impact of preheat and pre-reformer design on H_2 plant efficiency and CO_2 emissions; and 3. reducing capital cost through top-fired reformer design and modularization of equipment.