Validation of a hydrogen network RTO application for decision support of refinery operators

The validation process of a real-time optimiser (RTO) of a refinery hydrogen network is studied in this paper. The analysis focuses on the RTO utility for operators’ decision support, due to process and equipment uncertainties, such as actual hydrogen demand and hydrocarbons (HC) loads. The validation underpins on the analysis of shortlisted key network variables, comparing actual reconciled (REC) and RTO figures. This methodology is applied to: a high hydrogen demand scenario (period 1), and a low hydrogen demand scenario (period 2). The RTO showed better solutions than REC for both periods. However, the gap between RTO and REC was larger at lower hydrogen demands, due to better usage of hydrogen purification membranes by the RTO than operators. Additionally, other important information for operators was provided by the RTO, such as optimal HC loads, least gas purges and optimal hydrogen production. Hence, the application of the RTO for aiding operators’ decisions was successfully validated. Nonetheless, some challenging limitations appeared and are discussed. This is the case of: a more sensible account of low purity header lower bound, and incorporation of Lagrange multipliers to the analysis. These improvements may lead future work on the subject