Biotech, chemical, petrochemical & pharmaceutical - HiQ® Specialty ...

HiQ ® specialty gas program – Biotech, chemical, petrochemical & pharmaceutical
Calorimetric control
The petrochemical industry uses many different sources as raw materials. Often crude oil is used. After refining, it is
used as the raw material for other production processes and synthesis. Unfortunately, most fractions of the oil are too
heavy and dense to be used, which limits its applications.
Converting these fractions into smaller molecules, however, increases the value of the product enormously. The heavier oil fractions can
be cracked in a reactor, creating small molecules. The cracking creates unsaturated bondings within the molecules. Hydrogen can be
used to saturate these bonds again to create precisely the product that is wanted. Hydrogen is normally produced by steam reforming
of natural gas into carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
The composition of natural gas varies widely. Besides its main component methane, other hydrocarbons are part of the natural gas,
including nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The latter components in particular do not contribute at all to the generation of hydrogen. In
fact, they lower the yield and valuable energy is lost in the steam reformer. As a bulk consumer, this industry therefore needs to know
the composition of the natural gas it intends to use. The heat content is expressed as the caloric value. It defines the quality and value
of the delivered natural gas. The incoming natural gas is analyzed to determine its chemical composition and caloric value. The analyzer
is normally calibrated with a mixture of a known composition. Natural gas is generally categorized as either low-caloric or high-caloric
according to a common standard. Lowcalor or Highcalor natural gas are common standards that are used for caloric measurements.