Air Products, the hydrogen provider, has signed a long-term agreement with Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) and will build, own, and operate several new industrial gas production facilities in Kochi, Kerala, India. The new industrial gas complex will provide hydrogen, syngas, nitrogen and oxygen for BPCL’s Kochi Refinery and its proposed petrochemicals complex. The facilities will support India’s largest-ever outsourced hydrogen requirement and will result in Air Products’ first hydrogen production facilities in India. Initial supply of gases to BPCL’s Kochi Refinery is scheduled for late 2015.
The new facilities will supply industrial gases to BPCL’s Kochi Refinery, which is currently undergoing a USD 2.6B integrated expansion project that will increase its crude refining capacity to 15.5Mt per annum (approximately 310,000 barrels per day). Under the agreement, Air Products will provide an innovative combination of plant technologies including two steam methane reformer (SMR) trains, a cryogenic syngas purification system, an air separation unit to produce nitrogen and oxygen, and a gas turbine to produce power.
These efforts and other productivity improvements will help to improve the BPCL Kochi Refinery’s conversion of heavy crude, allowing for the production of clean fuels to meet Euro IV/V specifications. The new hydrogen facilities will be built through the global hydrogen alliance between Air Products and Technip.
