Engineering Design Of A800Nm~3/h Hydrogen Production System From Methanol Steam Reform

Hydrogen is widely used in the fields of chemistry, metallurgy, electronics, aerospaceand so on. There are many ways for the preparation of hydrogen. It can be obtained not onlyfrom chemical methods like reforming, decomposition, photolysis, hydrolysis, but also fromother ways such as electrolysis of water, microbial fermentation or photosynthesis. Amongthe three methods, the chemical method is a major way to produce hydrogen in recent years.According to different raw materials, chemical hydrogen production method can be furtherdivided into four ways: water gas shift reaction, hydrocarbon reforming, ammonia crackingand steam methanol reforming. Steam methanol reforming with its many advantages hasbecome the mainstream of hydrogen production plants in small and middle scale. Theadvantages include: a) low investment, low energy consumption, low cost of unit productionof hydrogen; b) easy in getting, transporting and storing raw material; c) assembled andportable device can be made which made it can be easily operated and flexibly handled. Inthe purification disposal of gas, pressure swing adsorption (PSA) shows a distinct function onseparation in the competition with traditional separation processes including low-temperaturemethod and the absorption method, and has been further developed and refined.This paper designed an800Nm3/h hydrogen production system from steam methanolreform process and PSA. It will provide the Beijing Institute of Aeronautics and Astronauticswith high-purity hydrogen. The main process include: Methanol and desalted water both fromthe boundary region are measured before mixing as the raw material. Then the raw materialwas pressurized by the pump before heated. After heated, the liquid conveyed into a vaporizerwhere the material liquid converted to raw gas. In accordance with the process, the gasentered into the reactor. With the heat provided by heat conduction oil, the gas reformed asreaction gas. After twice heat exchanged and watering, the reaction gas enters into PSA thatincluded two sections: adsorption and regeneration. After the PSA, the product gas-H2couldbe obtained.From the start-up to the completion of a project, a lot of steps would be finishednormally, including balance calculation of heat and material, program of instrument control,piping and instrument diagram, selection of standard equipment, design of non-standard equipment, electrical instrumentation, civil engineering, piping design, bill of material and soon. This article was also according to the above design process, and kept focus on the designof the reactor, the accounting of adsorption tower and so on. Among the design, all thedrawings for this plant had met the demand of construction. In the end of this article, thewatering tower and heat exchangers were optimized.