On March 26, 2022, the mega PSA hydrogen unit supplied under an EP contract by Southwest Chemical Research and Design Institute Co., Ltd. (SWCRI) for Shaanxi Coal Yulin Chemical’s 1.8 million tons/year ethylene glycol project (part of the Coal-Based Chemical New Materials Demonstration Project) was the first unit to be successfully handed over among all plant facilities.

As a large-scale hydrogen purification process, PSA hydrogen production plays a vital role in modern refineries and coal-to-chemicals complexes. With the rapid growth of China’s refining and coal chemical industries, hydrogen consumption scales have been continuously expanding.

The Yulin Chemical ethylene glycol project, part of Shaanxi Coal’s flagship demonstration initiative, adopts coal-water slurry gasification technology. The process flow includes gasification, shift conversion, Rectisol (low-temperature methanol wash), PSA hydrogen separation, and cryogenic CO separation, ultimately producing ethylene glycol. The supporting PSA hydrogen unit, developed with SWCRI’s proprietary technology, full-process design, and key equipment supply, is designed with a feed gas handling capacity of 570,000 Nm³/h and a hydrogen production capacity of 440,000 Nm³/h—making it the largest coal-to-hydrogen PSA plant in the world once completed.

Project Milestones

May 21, 2019–SWCRI announced as successful bidder.

August 8, 2019–EP project team established.

June 5, 2020–All detailed engineering designs completed on schedule.

July 11, 2020–First major lift completed, entering equipment installation phase.

March 26, 2022–Unit successfully handed over.

During project execution, SWCRI overcame pandemic-related challenges, ensuring on-time equipment delivery, deploying senior technical experts to support the owner and contractors, and resolving installation issues on site—achieving an early and high-standard handover.

Historically, SWCRI has provided full substitution and surpassing of foreign PSA technologies across numerous major refining and coal chemical projects, including CNPC, Sinopec, CNOOC, Sinochem Quanzhou, Hengyi Brunei, Shenhua Ordos Direct Liquefaction, Shenhua Ningxia CTL, and Shaanxi Coal Group, thereby offering critical technical support for China’s 10-million-ton refinery complexes and million-ton coal chemical projects.

In May 2021, SWCRI announced winning the Yulong Island 20-million-ton refining & chemical integration project (Phase I), covering six large PSA units (hydrogen from methanol reforming, coal-based syngas, etc.) with a total hydrogen production capacity of 850,000 Nm³/h. In January 2022, SWCRI won the EP contract for the residue hydrogen PSA unit at the same project (capacity 130,000 Nm³/h, design pressure 5.8 MPa), raising the Yulong Island Phase I total PSA hydrogen output to 980,000 Nm³/h—a new record for mega PSA projects in world-scale refineries.

This achievement has set a new record for Southwest Institute in terms of total hydrogen production capacity from mega-scale PSA units within ten-million-ton oil refining projects. 

It is worth mentioning that as early as 2012, Southwest Institute was contracted by Baling Petrochemical to EPC a 70,000 Nm3/h VPSA hydrogen recovery unit using decarbonized purified gas from Rectisol as feed gas. The unit was successfully started up in 2014 with a hydrogen recovery rate ≥96% and has been operating stably for nearly 8 years.

The long-term stable operation of the unit has brought significant economic benefits to the enterprise. Last year, Southwest Institute won another contract from Baling Petrochemical for the PSA & TSA units within the Caprolactam Industrial Chain Relocation and Upgrade Transformation Project, with designed hydrogen production capacities of 100,000 Nm3/h and 12,957 Nm3/h respectively, at an operating pressure of 5.1 MPa. After comprehensive consideration of product hydrogen specifications, Southwest Institute's patented technologies —"PSA Process with Two Equalization Tanks" and“high-efficiency gas separation PSA method”, ensuring both efficiency and reliability. The long-term stable operation of these PSA systems will continue to deliver significant economic and environmental benefits, reinforcing SWCRI’s leadership in large-scale PSA hydrogen technology.