Question
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Is there a catalytic means to increase production from our hydrogen plant without a revamp or other significant capital outlay?
Mar-2022
Answers
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Tom Ventham, G. W. Aru, LLC and Unicat Catalyst Technologies, tom.ventham@gwaru.com
This question accurately illustrates the most popular query heard from refiners today. How can this vital future resource of hydrogen be enhanced from existing on-site refinery equipment without the need for expensive retrofits or brand new projects? What the question is missing is a time aspect to the problem, as refiners and syngas producers need these improvements now. This need is incompatible with the timeline to evaluate, cost, gain funding approval, design and engineer, and then construct and commission the revamp or new low-carbon (i.e., blue hydrogen) solution
A solution does already exist for this problem and is one that is known to a large number of refining companies and syngas producers who have shown an interest in enhancing production of hydrogen at their sites. A number of these companies are already taking advantage of the benefit of this MagCat SMR catalyst by producing 15% more hydrogen than their previous capacity. As a superior catalyst technology, MagCat from Unicat can also provide other benefits compared to conventional catalysts from other suppliers. This includes the ability to reduce fuel consumption in the reformer furnace and make CO2 reductions — both topics of very great importance at the current time.MagCat achieves the benefits of a superior SMR catalyst by reimagining the size and shape of the physical carrier and by no longer being limited by the constraints of the traditional production processes used to produce the carriers (i.e. pellets) for conventional SMR catalysts. Optimising size and shape of a catalyst used in these gas-phase tubular reformer reactors unlocks multiple benefits. This includes the ability process more feed gas in the SMR without loss of conversion, which can be understood using fundamental principles of chemical engineering — fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and thermodynamics.
MagCat achieves multiple, step-out benefits for the SMR operator while avoiding complexities and inherent issues experienced with other, now defunct, high hydrogen production SMR catalytical solutions previously proposed to the industry by other suppliers. MagCat requires no changes to the operating, start-up, shutdown, or unloading procedures and in fact offers the ability to simplify loading procedures as it can be direct loaded to reformer tubes and does not require costly dense loading. As a real and proven solution with tangible functional improvements, MagCat offers refiners looking to improve hydrogen production an answer to this problem today. In view of current historic high natural gas prices many refiners are considering bringing forward catalyst change-outs to be able to load MagCat now in their steam methane reformers. Without exotic materials of construction or long lead-times this is possible. MagCat is compatible with all SMR unit designs and licences, all possible hydrogen plant configurations, and can be effectively used alongside any other upstream or downstream hydrogen plant catalysts and absorbents. Moreover, Unicat also supports uprating PSA units with high-performance Unicat absorbents to ensure any additional hydrogen production is effectively captured — a key consideration for all reformer operators considering increases to hydrogen production. MagCat is a truly innovative solution to catalytically increase hydrogen production as a cost- and time-wise alternative to retrofit installations such as a pre-reformer or post-reformer.
Mar-2022
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