Air Products Qudra, a regional development and investment joint venture between Air Products and Qudra Energy, a subsidiary of Vision Invest, recently broke ground on a fully integrated industrial gases hub in Jubail Industrial City in Saudi Arabia. 

Production facilities at the complex will be owned and operated by the jv partners. These include a world-scale steam methane reformer (SMR) to produce hydrogen, as well as an air separation unit (ASU) that will produce oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen pressure swing adsorption (PSA) units to recover hydrogen from off-gases. 

The partners are also installing a comprehensive pipeline network to connect and transport industrial gases to the broad refinery and chemical customer base in the region.

When completed in 2023, Air Products said the gases hub will reliably serve the continued growth of Jubail Industrial City and enable the chemical cluster at Jubail to achieve higher values for off-gases and introduce new technologies to convert low-value feedstocks into high-value products.

The SMR, which the US industrial gases producer said will match the largest it has ever built, at Texas City, Texas, will supply refineries and petrochemical plants to fill the growing demand in the Eastern Region of Saudi Arabia.

Air Products added that the facility’s state-of-the-art technology will maximize energy efficiency and reduce emissions as well as offering optimal heat integration to reduce and lower feedstock consumption. A second hydrogen fueling station is also planned.