Design of Hydrogen Network Integrated with the Shared Purifier in Hydrogen Production Plant

A shared purifier (i.e., pressure swing adsorption (PSA)) embedded in a hydrogen production plant would avoid the investment of an additional purifier and save the resource consumption (i.e., natural gas). Little work has been conducted on the design of a purification reuse/recycle hydrogen network integrated with the purifier in a hydrogen production plant. In this paper, a generalized improved problem table is used to determine the targets of a hydrogen network with a purification reuse/recycle. Material balance analysis in different cases of hydrogen networks with purification reuse/recycle is conducted. The first case is a conventional hydrogen network with an additional purifier, and three scenarios are analyzed to illustrate the impact of hydrogen composition in the hydrogen utility and PSA product gas on the design of the hydrogen network. The other case considers the integration of PSA in a hydrogen production plant, and two scenarios are proposed. Results show that the direct utilization of the converted gas and the overall optimization of the hydrogen network integrated with PSA in the hydrogen production plant can reduce the flow rates of hydrogen utility and raw resource consumption for hydrogen production.