Air Products breaks ground on world-scale steam methane reformer in Texas

By Lee Nichols
Editor

BAYTOWN, Texas -- Air Products recently held a ground-breaking ceremony at Covestro’s facility in Baytown, Texas, where Air Products will invest $350-$400 million to build, own and operate a world-scale steam methane reformer (SMR). 

The SMR will produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide to be supplied to Covestro and other customers linked to Air Products’ Gulf Coast Hydrogen and CO Pipeline networks. The new unit is expected to begin operations in 2018. 

“We have worked with Covestro (formerly Bayer MaterialScience) for decades and look forward to being an important industrial gas supplier to them in Baytown for many more years to come. The new SMR strengthens Air Products’ position in the Texas carbon monoxide market and enhances our well established hydrogen supply network,” said Corning Painter, executive vice president, Industrial Gases at Air Products.

The SMR and cold box will be located on land leased from Covestro, a world-leading manufacturer of high-tech polymer materials for key industries, headquartered in Leverkusen, Germany. The SMR will produce approximately 125 million standard cubic feet/day of hydrogen and a world-scale supply of carbon monoxide. 

“Safe, reliable and efficient operations through our people remains extremely important at Covestro. We continually develop our people to improve safety and respect the environment, as well as optimize our processes to improve our yields to top levels in industry, which means less raw materials, less waste and higher efficiencies,” said Dr. Klaus Schäfer, Covestro’s chief industrial operations officer. “Covestro’s alignment with Air Products will further improve our Baytown site’s reliable supply to our valued customers.”

Covestro’s Baytown facility, its largest plant in North and Central America, was established in 1971 and employs a workforce of 1,100 with an additional 750 contractors. Covestro’s primary products at its Baytown site include toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and methylene diphenylene isocyanates (MDI), in addition to coatings and adhesives, inorganic basic chemicals, polycarbonates, and polyurethanes. 

It is a leading supplier of high-value polymers and innovative solutions for key sectors such as transportation, construction, electronics, furniture, sports equipment and textiles. 

The new SMR will be built through the global hydrogen alliance between Air Products and Technip, a world leader in project management, engineering and construction. The plant will feature the latest technology to maximize energy efficiency and reduce emissions, and will include optimal heat integration, which in turn lowers feedstock consumption. 

The plant configuration and deployed technologies support Air Products’ overall sustainability goals of reducing energy consumption and emissions.

Painter also added that the ability for the new plant to connect to Air Products’ existing Gulf Coast Pipeline (GCP), the world’s largest hydrogen plant and pipeline network system, remains a value-added plus for hydrogen customers in terms of ensuring product reliability.

Air Products officially dedicated its GCP in 2012. The 600-mile pipeline span stretches from the Houston Ship Channel in Texas to New Orleans, Louisiana, and supplies customers with over 1.4 billion feet of hydrogen per day from over 22 hydrogen production facilities. 

Hydrogen is widely used in petroleum refining processes to remove impurities found in crude oil such as sulfur, olefins and aromatics to meet product fuels specifications. Removing these components allows gasoline and diesel to burn cleaner and thus makes hydrogen a critical component in the production of cleaner fuels needed by modern, efficient internal combustion engines.