12 Production of Hydrogen for the Commercial Market: Current and Future Trends C. R. BAKER
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Union Carbide Corporation, Linde Division, P.O. Box 144, Tonawanda, NY 14150
The importance of hydrogen in the petroleum refining and chemical process industries is well established. Hydrogen is employed in a myriad of applications which range from the production of fertilizer to the upgrading of gasoline to the
manufacture of semiconductors.
A list of some of the more important uses for hydrogen is given in Figure 1. The single greatest use is for the manufacture of ammonia, which consumes approximately 60% of all hydrogen produced; followed by hydrocracking of heavy residual oils to produce high quality gasoline, a process which consumes an additional 17% of total hydrogen production. Other important applications of hydrogen are for the hydrodesulfurization of sulfur-bearing petroleum streams and for the production of methanol, each contributing about 10%. The total demand for hydrogen in the United States for the year 1975 has been placed (1) at a total of 0.58 x 10' 5 Btus (0.58 Quads), equivalent to a volumetric production rate of about 6 billion SCFD (Table I). The demand for hydrogen is
expected to grow at an annual rate of about 4.5% to a level of 1.77 Quads by the year 2000. Others (2) have estimated the requirements for industrial hydrogen wTthin the United States to be even greater, rising to as much as 3 Quads at the end of the century. These estimates do not include any new uses
for hydrogen which may develop in the future, such as for the
manufacture of synthetic fuels or for use directly as a fuel for automobile, rail, or air transportation. Such applications would be expected to increase the demand for hydrogen substantially, reaching levels as high as 14 Quads in the year
2000 and 50 Quads by 2020 (3J. As a percentage of the total
national energy demand, process hydrogen currently amounts to
about 0.9, and should increase to 1.2 - 1.3% by the year 2000.
There are no significant quantities of naturally occurring
free hydrogen anywhere on earth; hydrogen exists mostly in combined form. Major sources of hydrogen are shown in Table II. For commercial purposes, the two basic sources of hydrogen are 0-8412-0522-l/80/47-116-229$06.00 © 1980 American Chemical Society Smith and Santangelo; Hydrogen: Production and Marketing ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1980.
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HYDROGEN: PRODUCTION AND MARKETING
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