Evaluation of hydrogen production from catalytic reforming of liquefied petroleum gas with carbon capture and storage

Abstract

The objective of this study was to describe the hydrogen production from catalytic reforming of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) with carbon capture and storage (CCS). Nowadays, hydrogen requires a lot of attention as a clean fuel as well as a chemical used in industrial applications (e.g. hydrogenation processes especially in oil refinery sector). The size of evaluated plant was 100000 Nm(3)/h hydrogen with a purity of 99.95% (vol.) to be in line with industrial hydrogen production capacities used in the oil refinery sector. A pre-combustion CO2 capture process based on Methyl-DiEthanol-Amine (MDEA) was also considered to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions (decarbonisation of fossil LPG used). The carbon capture rate was about 78%. The evaluation was made using process flow modeling (ChemCAD) and the simulation results were compared with experimental data reported in the literature. A similar hydrogen production process from LPG reforming without carbon capture was also considered to assess the energy penalty for CO2 capture. This work is an important study for evaluation of reducing carbon footprint in oil refinery sector.