All over the world, Air Liquide has long been a preferred partner of oil refiners.

It provides its customers with real added value, a comprehensive range of uniform products and services all over the world, and the ability to supply any amount of industrial gas and utility with its high-capacity production plants. These plants are connected to pipeline networks and/or production and distribution systems installed at the refinery.

A Comprehensive and Uniform Offer Throughout the World

The oil refining market is a global market with refineries located all over the world operated by highly internationalised oil groups.

Air Liquide's local and global organization can provide them with an overall solution to their requirements and guarantee the same high-quality service throughout the world. From Singapore to Houston, from Australia to South Africa, it guarantees the same level of service regardless of where refineries are located. It also:

• Supports refineries with its local organization
• Gives them access to its global R&D; network
• Optimises solutions and provides partial or total investment
• Allows them to concentrate on their core business

Air Gas Supply, Applications and Related Services

Processing hydrocarbons requires the use of an inert gas for many operations such as purging, shut-down, start-up and pressurizing, to operate refineries in total safety.

Air Liquide provides optimised nitrogen supply solutions to meet each refinery's specific requirements and specific applications, such as catalyst cooling and regeneration. It also supplies pure and welding gases required for analysis, laboratory or maintenance work.

The group has also developed technology and equipment which uses oxygen to treat water, and to de-bottlenecking and optimise catalytic cracking units (FCC) and sulphur recycling units (Claus), and can also provide related services such as simulation and design.

Solutions to Adjust the Hydrogen Balance

Air Liquide has developed its own PSA, membrane and cryogenic technologies to recover and purify the hydrogen contained in many effluents often used as fuel gas.

This on-site recovery may be combined with the supply of hydrogen by pipeline to increase flexibility and meet the growing hydrogen requirements made necessary by changes in crude oil quality and petroleum product specifications.

Air Liquide is also ready to invest in, build and operate hydrogen production units, either at the refinery or near by, to supply the large amounts of hydrogen required for effective de-sulphurising or residues and/or hydro-cracking.

An agreement with Haldor Topsoe A/S and Howe Baker Engineers Inc. allows Air Liquide to use the finest steam reforming technology and supply hydrogen at the lowest cost, with unequalled flexibility and reliability.

Clean Power Production and Expanded Utilities Offer

The gasification of petroleum residues may be an effective solution for producing large amounts of electricity (250 or 500 MW), while considerably reducing polluting effluents in comparison with traditional coal or fuel-oil fired power plants. Air Liquide has furthermore optimised the design of large oxygen production units specifically for gasification, which enabled it to win the only two contracts to supply oxygen for this application in 1996, with ISAB Energy (3800 t/day) and Sarlux (4600 t/day) in Italy.

Air Liquide also produces electric power using cogeneration technology, which enables it to use the steam our customers produce on site as well as such associated utilities as demineralized water and compressed air, to provide an expanded offer.