The refinery has high requirements for the stability of hydrogen demand. The construction of independent hydrogen production equipment should ensure the stable operation of the equipment, ensure the stable supply of raw material properties and quantity, and the process technology should be mature and reliable. There are three main sources of hydrogen in refineries :
Hydrogen is a by-product of crude oil processing, including by-product of reforming unit, hydrogen-rich gas recovery, by-product of ethylene, electrolysis and dehydrogenation unit in the chemical system of refining and chemical integration.
The refinery is equipped with an independent hydrogen production device to produce hydrogen.
Purchased hydrogen source.
The by-product hydrogen from reforming accounts for about 0.5 % ~ 1.0 % of the total crude oil. The by-product hydrogen from reforming and other devices is difficult to meet the increasing demand for processing of sulfur-containing crude oil and inferior crude oil. In addition, China is accelerating the construction of large-scale hydrogenation refineries. The consumption trend of hydrogen resources is increasing rapidly, and the matching hydrogenation capacity accounts for more than 70 % of the crude oil processing capacity. It is difficult to solve the hydrogen balance and demand of the whole plant through its own and traditional processing methods. It is necessary to build an independent hydrogen production unit to produce hydrogen.
Selection of raw material route for hydrogen production plant
The refinery has high requirements for the stability of hydrogen demand. The construction of independent hydrogen production equipment should ensure the stable operation of the equipment, ensure the stable supply of raw material properties and quantity, and the process technology should be mature and reliable.
The selection of raw material route for hydrogen production depends on the availability of raw material resources, technical maturity and economic rationality of raw materials. The raw materials for hydrogen production mainly include refinery dry gas, natural gas, coal, light naphtha and heavy oil.
However, with the increase of domestic chemical demand, the trend of heavy oil and naphtha resource utilization has been strengthened. The original heavy oil hydrogen production unit has not made full use of the value of raw materials, and it is more and more difficult to reflect the economy in terms of cost-effectiveness, which has affected the economic benefits of refineries, so it has been discontinued.
In actual production, the hydrogen production device using dry gas as raw material needs to comprehensively solve the contradiction between the fuel balance of the whole plant. Hydrogen production from natural gas and coal, which are independent sources of raw materials, are becoming the two most important development directions of hydrogen production.
