Automatic Design of Multi-Impurity Refinery Hydrogen Networks Using Mixing Potential Concept

The hydrogen supply in many refineries is becoming a critical issue because of a trend of heavier crude oils and increasingly rigorous environmental legislation. One of the significant problems is that the concentration fluctuation of hydrogen affects product quality of refineries and causes economic losses. In this article, we investigate the disturbance resistance ability of the hydrogen network with multiple impurities. The previously defined mixing potential of a single impurity is extended to the multiple impurity case. Then, the disturbance resistance ability is optimized under minimum hydrogen utility consumption by the mathematical programming method. Later, such disturbance resistance ability of the obtained network structure is verified by Monte Carlo simulation. Several literature examples are investigated to illustrate the effectiveness of the method. Monte Carlo simulation results show that the disturbance resistance ability of the hydrogen network obtained by the proposed method is better than the literature performance in five cases, while one case stays the same.