01-05-2012

Honeywell’s UOP technology selected by Sinochem to produce high-purity hydrogen

UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, announced today that it has been selected by Sinochem to provide technology to purify hydrogen at a new refinery in China.

Sinochem Quanzhou Petrochemical Co. Ltd. will use two Honeywell UOP Polybed™ PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) Systems to produce high-purity hydrogen at its new refinery. The hydrogen will be used for the production of clean transportation fuels, including diesel, gasoline and jet fuel, in the new 12 million-ton-per-year refinery.

“Reliable technology that maximizes hydrogen recovery helps optimize hydrogen efficiency and improve return on investment,” said Rebecca Liebert, vice president and general manager for Gas Processing and Hydrogen at Honeywell’s UOP. “Hydrogen impacts a facility’s profitability in many ways, including product quality, yield and catalyst life, and we look forward to helping Sinochem maximize its return on investment.”

Refineries use hydrogen in the hydrocracking process to convert heavy oils to lighter, higher-value products such as transportation fuels. Hydrogen is also used in the hydrotreating process to remove contaminants and improve the quality of end products.

Two Polybed PSA Systems will be used to process hydrogen from different streams throughout the facility. The system processing feed from a steam reformer will produce 140,000 Nm3/h (normal cubic meters per hour) of hydrogen, and the system processing refinery off-gas will produce 110,000 Nm3/h of hydrogen. The facility, located in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China, is expected to start up in 2013.

To date, Honeywell’s UOP has provided more than 900 Polybed PSA Systems worldwide. The Polybed PSA System is a skid-mounted, modular unit that comes complete with hardware, adsorbents, control systems and embedded process technology. The process uses proprietary Honeywell UOP adsorbents to adsorb impurities at high pressure from hydrogen-containing waste streams and subsequently reject them at low pressure. The system allows hydrogen to be recovered and upgraded to more than 99.9 percent purity to meet downstream processing requirements.

In addition to recovering and purifying hydrogen from steam reformers and refinery off-gases, Polybed PSA Systems can be used to produce hydrogen from other sources, including ethylene off-gas, methanol off-gas and partial oxidation/syngas.

Sinochem Quanzhou Petrochemical Co. Ltd. is a fully owned subsidiary of Sinochem Group, headquartered in Beijing, China.

For more information, please visit www.uop.com