Increased hydrogen demand often makes hydrogen supply a severe bottleneck for many modern refineries. The paper first provides a detailed review of existing methodologies for refinery hydrogen management. Much progress has been made in the last few years for the technology development of refinery hydrogen management, with two categories of approaches: simple hydrogen pinch analysis for network targeting, and detailed mathematical programming approaches for optimisation, design and retrofit. However, when applied to revamping existing refinery hydrogen networks, they show common limitations by their rigid restrictions of constant hydrogen purity and hydrogen partial pressure in hydroprocessing reactors. Such restrictions are not exactly followed in industrial practice, and make it extremely difficult to modify any complex hydrogen systems using existing techniques.
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