In large scale hydrogen production the SMR process is used in combination with PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) technology. The PSA technology consists of several reactors in which a mixture of hydrogen, methane, CO and CO₂ is separated in several steps into pure hydrogen and an off-gas which is a mixture of hydrogen, methane, CO and CO₂. This off-gas can be used as fuel in the SMR process. These large scale PSAs operate in ranges between 10.000 and 1.000.000 Nm³ per hour and very high pressure.
Similar to small scale reformers, small scale PSAs are not commercially available. Therefore at HyGear a propriatory design was made using a similar process as large scale PSA, but avoiding the limitation of downscaling effects. The development resulted in a complete new low pressure design with a good balance between reliability and low cost, called the Qcycle^®-PSA. This The Qcycle^®-PSA is fully integrated with the HISR^®-fuel processing section and optimized in terms of efficiency and purity.