Refinery Off-Gas as Feed to a Hydrogen Production Facility: Performance Lifting of the Steam Reforming Technique

Abstract

Refinery off-gas is one of the major causes of air pollution, where its reuse, through channeling into other plant setups to recover some of its constituent gases (via a steam reforming technique), is described as one of its best handling measures. A nominal off-gas containing 2.898% hydrogen (H2), 83.794% methane, 1.505% carbon dioxide, 1.103% nitrogen, 10.6% sulfur and 0.1% argon was fed to a plant to produce 37.52 kg of H2. To lift the performance of the multiple interconnected process units enhancing the generation of H2, temperature and pressure in the reactors were manipulated against the heat duty and H2 yield, where it was found that the two dependent variables are sensitive to changes made during Aspen Plus sensitivity analysis. Replacing some process units also shows significant improvement in the recovery of H2 gas. Adequate control of the synthesis process as exemplified in this work, will lead to smooth realization of the target end-product which is of high economic value; basically, looking at its potential for the manufacture of other useful materials it is already known for.