Honeywell's UOP announced Monday the award of its 1,000th system for purifying hydrogen, which is being installed at Ruwais refinery in the United Arab Emirates.

The Ruwais complex is operated by the Abu Dhabi Oil Refining Company (Takreer).

The UOP Polybed PSA system will recover and purify hydrogen for Takreer’s carbon black and delayed coker project to meet the increasing need for clean transportation fuels. 

UOP first invented the Polybed PSA technology in 1966 and has supplied improved versions of the technology to meet the growing global demand for hydrogen. Hydrogen is essential in today’s refining industry for upgrading heavy crude oils into refined fuels, in addition to helping meet increasingly tight transportation fuel specifications.

“The selection of our 1,000th PSA unit is a great milestone for UOP that demonstrates the value we have brought to high-purity hydrogen technology over the last half century,” said Rebecca Liebert, senior vice president and general manager of UOP's gas processing and hydrogen business. 

“It also shows that UOP remains at the cutting edge of innovation while offering the most compelling economic solutions for our customers.”

Polybed PSA systems are skid-mounted, modular units complete with hardware, adsorbents, control systems and embedded process technology, enabling quick and efficient installation to reduce cost and downtime.

The process uses proprietary UOP adsorbents to remove impurities at high pressure from hydrogen-containing process streams, allowing hydrogen to be recovered and upgraded to more than 99.9% purity to meet refining needs. 

In addition to recovering and purifying hydrogen from steam reformers and refinery off-gases, Polybed PSA systems can be used to produce hydrogen from other sources such as ethylene off-gas, methanol off-gas and partial oxidation/synthesis gas.