Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a final rule in the Federal Register-in order to reduce the impact of motor vehicles and fuel on air quality and public health, starting in 2017, Tier 3 (Phase 3) will be more stringent. Strict motor vehicle emission standards and lower gasoline sulfur content standards. Among them, the annual average sulfur content of gasoline will not exceed 10ppm from January 1, 2017, and the current requirement is that the sulfur content does not exceed 30ppm. In order to remove the excess sulfur in the fuel, the refinery needs an adequate supply of hydrogen.

In addition, some synthetic ammonia manufacturers have planned to build methanol and synthetic ammonia projects on the Gulf Coast of the United States. Although this type of device can obtain hydrogen through its own steam reformer, the hydrogen required by a methanol or ammonia synthesis device may exceed the hydrogen production capacity of its own steam reformer. In this case, companies need to rely on external hydrogen supply.

There is an ample supply of low-cost natural gas raw materials, and cyanuric chloride has brought the US synthetic ammonia and nitrogen fertilizer industries back to life. The operating rate of installations has begun to increase, and idle production capacity has been restarted. Pesticide manufacturers and many companies have announced that they will expand the capacity of new or existing installations. It is expected that the United States will add more than 5 million tons/year of synthetic ammonia production capacity by 2018.