Filling The Void With Hydrogen

Hydrogen has many uses both on a large scale and small scale. Hydrogen is used in Oil refining, the production of ammonia (Haber process), and as a fuel. The demand for hydrogen has been constantly increasing since 1945. We plan to produce hydrogen for ammonia production, fuel, and oil refining due to their high potential. The demand for hydrogen production is currently 75 million tons and only 60 million tons are being produced each year globally, which means our plant would succeed due to the growing demand. The versatility of our hydrogen market as well as new carbon capture technology keeps emissions to a minimum. We will be producing hydrogen via steam methane reforming (SMR) with a feed of natural gas due to having an efficiency greater than hydrogen production methods like electrolysis and biomass gasification. Alternative feeds we could use for the SMR process are coal or biomass, however, they either produce more emissions or are non-applicable in the market. Steam methane reforming takes methane and steam and reacts them at very high temperatures in a reformer to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The hydrogen and carbon monoxide then react in water gas shift reactors to produce more hydrogen and carbon dioxide instead of carbon monoxide. The hydrogen is then separated in a PSA to produce 99% hydrogen purity. Our process also adds in a Cryocap unit to capture carbon dioxide and reduce our emissions. Our goal is to produce 500 tons of hydrogen per day, which would compete with local hydrogen plants in Texas. This is an optimal location being near the most demanding markets of ammonia, oil refining, and fuel. Our SMR plant will be analyzed for its process integrity, safety, and economic feasibility given the projected market.