Relative concentration based pinch analysis for targeting and design of hydrogen and water networks with single contaminant

Abstract

Hydrogen and water are important resources for refineries. Pinch based conceptual method is an effective tool for fresh resource conservation of hydrogen and water networks. A novel graphical method is proposed to identify the minimum consumption of fresh resource and design the network for both hydrogen and water networks with single contaminant. This method replaces traditional total flow rate and absolute concentration constraints with hydrogen load and relative concentration, constructing the composite curves in contaminant load versus hydrogen load diagram to perform the targeting and design process. Furthermore, the proposed method can be reinforced by integrating purification reuse, conserving more fresh hydrogen and further reducing the waste discharge. This new method is visible, simple and easy to understand, suitable to both hydrogen and water networks. Three cases are studied to illustrate its application.