Air Products (LeHigh Valley, Pa.; www.airproducts.com) announced it has been awarded the longterm supply of approximately 30 million standard cubic feet per day of hydrogen by Marathon Petroleum Company LP for its Garyville, Louisiana refinery. This new supply award, to begin in November 2017, is in addition to volumes of hydrogen Air Products already provides Marathon Petroleum at its Garyville refinery.
“We are pleased to increase our hydrogen supply to Marathon Petroleum at Garyville. Marathon Petroleum is a valued long-term customer of Air Products and we serve several of their refineries in the United States,” said Marie Ffolkes, president – Industrial Gases Americas at Air Products.
“Air Products is a reliable supplier of hydrogen required for the production of cleaner burning transportation fuels by our refinery customers, and our Gulf Coast Pipeline (GCP) is an additional value-added source of reliable product supply. The increased hydrogen supply for Marathon Petroleum, and continued growth with other refiners on the pipeline network, is a testament to the size and reliability of our Gulf Coast Pipeline system,” Ffolkes said.
The additional hydrogen will be provided to Marathon Petroleum from Air Products’ existing Gulf Coast Pipeline, the world’s largest hydrogen plant and pipeline network system. Air Products officially dedicated its GCP in 2012. The 600-mile pipeline span stretches from the Houston Ship Channel in Texas to New Orleans, Louisiana, and supplies customers with over 1.4 billion feet of hydrogen per day from over 22 hydrogen production facilities.
Pipelines offer a safe, robust and reliable supply of hydrogen to the refinery and petrochemical industries around the world. Globally, Air Products’ pipeline operational expertise is evidenced by its network of systems. Besides the GCP, Air Products also has a hydrogen pipeline in California in the U.S., in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, and in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Hydrogen is widely used in petroleum refining processes to remove impurities found in crude oil such as sulphur, olefins and aromatics to meet product fuels specifications. Removing these components allows gasoline and diesel to burn cleaner and thus makes hydrogen a critical component in the production of cleaner fuels needed by modern, efficient internal combustion engines.
Marathon Petroleum Company LP, a subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum Corporation, is one of the largest petroleum refiners in the U.S. and the largest in the Midwest. In addition to Garyville, Air Products also supplies hydrogen to Marathon at its refineries nationwide in Los Angeles, California; Detroit, Michigan; and Catlettsburg, Kentucky. The Garyville refinery is the most recent greenfield refinery built in the U.S. (1972) and the third largest refinery in the U.S.