Steam Hydrocarbon Reformers - History
Selas Fluid was the first independent heater supplier to design, construct, and offer process guarantees for reforming furnaces in the United States. Our first reformer was supplied for an ammonia plant application in 1957. Prior to 1957, the majority of ammonia plants were supplied by process licensors; (Chemico, Girdler, and Kellogg). Each company had its' own proprietary reforming furnace design. Selas Fluid’s emergence as a supplier of the reforming technology was instrumental in enabling contractors such as C.F. Braun, Fluor, Bechtel, Pritchard, and Badger to enter the ammonia plant construction business. In 1959, we received our first patent for our reforming furnace technology. This patent was based on the Selas Gradiation® concept, which provided a uniform temperature profile around the catalyst tubes through a series of wall fired burners.
In 1962, Selas became the first independent reformer supplier to receive a direct license from ICI, Ltd. for their steam naphtha reforming process. Selas designed and supplied more than 30 steam-naphtha reformers, including the first 7 naphtha feed reformers in North America. As demand for hydrogen increased in the 1970’s, so did requirements for increased hydrogen purity. This in turn led to higher operating temperatures and pressures in the reformer, and evolutionary changes in the reformer design to accommodate the increased parameters.
As global energy costs soared in the mid-1970’s, the need for greater energy efficient designs also influenced reformer design. Selas Fluid's in-the-box outlet header design reduced the number of openings in the reformer and enabled operation at lower excess air ratios. The waste heat recovery section was optimized to include multiple stages such as feed preheat, superheated steam production, boiler feed water preheat, and combustion air preheat to maximize energy efficiency.
With the acquisition of Selas in 1982, Linde AG became the only hydrogen supplier to this day who owns both reforming and purification technologies. This allows for the total integration and optimization of the entire hydrogen plant, from feed pretreatment through purification.
Selas Fluid designs and supplies the reformer “island” that includes both the reformer and the heat recovery system for integration in a Linde-supplied hydrogen plant.
100MM SCFD reformer and waste heat recovery section supplied by Selas Fluid in a hydrogen plant designed, supplied, and constructed by Linde. The pressure swing absorption (PSA) and feed pre-treatment systems are also depicted.
As global environmental regulations of the 1990’s required more stringent emission control, Selas integrated the latest in low NOx burner design with post combustion emission reduction technologies (such as selective catalytic reduction) to meet single digit NOx, CO, and NH3 emission standards. Our current reformer designs combine the experience gained from supplying over 300 reformers with the latest design tools in 3-D design, computational fluid dynamic modeling, and incremental kinetic modeling.
Three-dimensional snapshot of the SCR catalyst module in the waste heat recovery section of a 100MM SCFD reformer