PED CE Steam Generators for Air Products SGGE Egypt Hydrogen Project — Inconel 825 & Duplex 2205

How Lmart fabricated two matched PED CE-certified steam generators in Inconel 825 and Duplex 2205 for a hydrogen production facility serving Egypt’s growing industrial gas sector.

Customer	Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (NYSE: APD)
End User / Site	SGGE — Egypt
Industry	Industrial Gas / Hydrogen Production
Project	SGGE 2×PHG250 Egypt
Product	Steam Generator PHG250 (蒸汽发生器)
Quantity	2 units (matched pair)
Unit Dimensions	DN762 × THK10 × L2285 mm
Unit Weight	1,560 kg each
Design Standard	PED 2014/68/EU, CE Marking
Shell Material	SB424 N08825 (Inconel 825) / Duplex 2205
Tube Material	N08825 (Inconel 825)
Application	Steam generation for industrial gas / hydrogen reforming process
Delivery Destination	Egypt
Key Outcome	Two fully matched, PED CE-certified units delivered on schedule with complete documentation, qualified for desert-climate export

Customer Background & Industry Context

Air Products is one of the world’s largest industrial gas companies, with operations spanning more than 50 countries and a market capitalisation exceeding $60 billion. The company is a global leader in hydrogen production, operating steam methane reforming (SMR) and autothermal reforming (ATR) plants that supply hydrogen and synthesis gas to petrochemical, fertilizer, refinery, and steel production customers around the world.

Egypt has emerged as one of the most significant industrial investment destinations in Africa and the Middle East. The country’s expanding petrochemical sector, combined with its strategic role in green and blue hydrogen development — anchored in part by the national fertilizer and nitrogen industry — has driven increasing demand for reliable, high-specification industrial gas infrastructure. SGGE, the local site entity partnering with Air Products for this project, represents the type of integrated industrial gas production asset that underpins Egypt’s industrial ambitions.

Steam generators play a foundational role in SMR-based hydrogen production plants. They generate the high-quality steam that feeds into the reforming reactors, maintaining the steam-to-carbon ratio essential for efficient and stable operation. In this service, the equipment is not a commodity. It is a continuous-duty pressure vessel operating at the intersection of elevated temperature, high pressure, and chemically aggressive process streams. Material selection, fabrication quality, and certification documentation are the three pillars that separate a serviceable unit from one that fails within its first operating cycle.

Air Products’ global procurement framework reflects this reality. Their engineers specify Inconel 825 tube bundles and Duplex 2205 shell components precisely because decades of plant operating experience have shown that these alloys survive where standard stainless steels do not.

Challenges & Engineering Pain Points

Delivering the SGGE steam generators required solving five overlapping challenges simultaneously.

1. PED CE compliance for Egyptian export. Egypt’s industrial projects, particularly those involving international EPC contractors or global industrial gas companies, routinely specify PED (Pressure Equipment Directive 2014/68/EU) as the governing design and certification framework. PED is not an optional enhancement — for Air Products procurement on an internationally managed project, CE marking backed by a Notified Body is a contractual prerequisite. This requires not just a compliant design but an active relationship with an accredited Notified Body, a documented Quality Management System that has passed NB audit, and a design dossier that satisfies Module B (Type Examination) and Module D or G conformity assessment requirements.

2. Nickel alloy and duplex stainless fabrication control. Inconel 825 (N08825) and Duplex 2205 are unforgiving materials in a fabrication shop environment. Duplex 2205 demands strict interpass temperature control — typically below 150°C — to preserve the austenite/ferrite phase balance. Excessive heat input destroys the duplex microstructure and creates material that is susceptible to pitting and sigma-phase embrittlement under operating conditions. Inconel 825 tube-to-tubesheet welding requires qualified WPS documentation specific to P-45 base metals and certified welders with current qualification records. Neither material tolerates improvisation.

3. Matched-pair consistency across two units. The project specified two functionally identical units. From a fabrication standpoint, this requirement goes beyond simply running the same drawing twice. Material heats, weld procedures, welder assignments, NDE coverage, hydrostatic test pressures, and final dimensional results must all be documented separately for each unit — and both documentation packages must arrive at the customer’s QA desk in a state that allows independent verification. Any discrepancy between the two units’ data packages creates a qualification issue that holds up commissioning.

4. Desert-climate packaging for Egypt delivery. Equipment destined for Egypt’s industrial zones — located in hot, sandy, and humid coastal and inland environments — requires packaging that goes beyond the standard practices applied to European or Northeast Asian delivery destinations. Moisture ingress during sea freight, sand contamination during port handling, and UV degradation of protective coatings during open-air storage at the destination site are all real failure modes. Export packaging for this project required internal preservation treatment, sealed end covers, and external crating appropriate for ambient temperatures that can exceed 45°C.

5. Export documentation and logistics management. International delivery to Egypt involves coordinating a specific set of documents: commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate of origin, CE Declaration of Conformity, and the pressure vessel certification package. Errors in any of these documents delay customs clearance and create contractual disputes. For Air Products, who manages global supply chains across dozens of simultaneous projects, a clean documentation package is not a courtesy — it is a hard operational requirement.

Why Air Products Selected Lmart

The decision to award the SGGE steam generators to Lmart rested on three established qualifications.

PED CE certification. Lmart holds current PED Module D Certification, enabling CE marking of pressure vessels up to Category III. This certification is maintained under annual surveillance audit by an accredited Notified Body. For Air Products procurement teams managing projects against European-standard certification requirements — regardless of the final installation country — the existence of this certification is a non-negotiable vendor prerequisite. Lmart is one of a small number of Chinese fabricators that hold this status.

Proven Air Products supply chain history. By the time the SGGE inquiry was evaluated, Lmart had already delivered equipment across multiple Air Products projects globally, including steam generators in N08825 and Duplex 2205 materials. This history means Air Products’ QA and engineering teams were not evaluating an unknown supplier. They had direct evidence of Lmart’s material handling discipline, NDE capabilities, documentation quality, and on-time delivery record. That track record eliminates the evaluation overhead and risk premium that accompanies a new vendor qualification.

Multi-unit matched-pair delivery capability. Delivering two identical certified pressure vessels — with independent, complete documentation packages for each unit — requires a quality management process and shop scheduling discipline that not every fabricator can demonstrate on demand. Lmart’s experience with matched-pair and multi-unit deliveries for industrial gas clients, combined with its ASME and PED QMS infrastructure, provided Air Products with a credible basis for awarding both units to a single source.

Engineering & Manufacturing Solution

The PHG250 steam generators were designed as shell-and-tube units, with the tube-side and shell-side configuration optimised for the operating pressures, temperatures, and fluid combinations specified in Air Products’ process data sheets.

Shell fabrication. The shell was formed from SB424 N08825 plate, rolled and longitudinally seam-welded under qualified WPS documentation covering P-45 (nickel alloy) to P-45 joints. Duplex 2205 was applied for structural reinforcement components where the higher yield strength of duplex stainless offered a weight and wall-thickness advantage over standard austenitic grades. All duplex welds were executed with verified preheat and controlled interpass temperatures, monitored with calibrated contact thermometers and recorded on the weld traveller accompanying each vessel.

Tube bundle assembly. Tubes were sourced as N08825 seamless drawn tubes with mill MTRs traceable to heat and lot number. Tubesheet material was specified to match the tube alloy, eliminating galvanic incompatibility at the tube-to-tubesheet joint interface. Tube-to-tubesheet welds were full-penetration strength welds executed by welders holding current P-45 qualification records. Liquid penetrant testing (PT) was applied to all tube-to-tubesheet welds post-welding, with results documented in the NDE reports forming part of the final dossier.

PED design dossier. The design calculations were prepared in accordance with EN 13445 (Unfired Pressure Vessels), with design pressure, design temperature, wind and seismic load cases, nozzle reinforcement, and flange calculations documented in a bound design report. This dossier was submitted to the Notified Body for review and Type Examination under PED Module B. The CE Declaration of Conformity was issued after hydrostatic testing and final inspection, with the CE marking affixed to each vessel nameplate alongside the Notified Body identification number.

Matched-pair execution control. To ensure consistency between the two units, Lmart’s QC team maintained a parallel documentation trail: separate inspection travellers, separate NDE reports, separate hydrostatic test records, and separate U-1-equivalent PED data sheets for each vessel. Both units were final-dimensioned simultaneously after completion, with measurements recorded against the certified drawing for side-by-side comparison before packaging.

Why Inconel 825? Material Selection Rationale

Property	316L SS	Inconel 825 (N08825)	Inconel 625 (N06625)
SCC Resistance	Poor — fails in chloride environments	Excellent	Superior
Pitting Resistance (PREN)	~25	~33	~51
Max Service Temp	~450 °C	~540 °C	~650 °C
Weldability	Excellent	Good — requires qualified WPS	Good — requires qualified WPS
Relative Material Cost	1×	3–4×	6–8×
Typical Application	General chemical service	H&sub2;/syngas, high-purity gas, sulfuric acid	Subsea, ultra-high corrosion

For this service — high-purity hydrogen generation with mixed acid condensate — Inconel 825 provides the required corrosion resistance at roughly half the cost of Inconel 625, making it the engineering-optimal choice.

Quality Control & Delivery

Fabrication proceeded through the following defined inspection hold and witness points:

• Material receiving inspection — dimensional check, MTR review, and PMI (positive material identification) by XRF analyser on all N08825 and Duplex 2205 materials before shop release
• Fit-up and dimensional inspection — joint geometry, root gap, and nozzle orientation verified before welding begins on each sub-assembly
• Welding control — preheat, interpass temperature, heat input, and welder ID recorded on the weld traveller for every joint on the pressure boundary
• NDE — radiographic testing (RT) of longitudinal and circumferential shell seams; PT on all tube-to-tubesheet welds and nozzle attachment welds
• Hydrostatic test — each vessel tested to 1.43× design pressure per EN 13445, witnessed and countersigned by the Notified Body representative
• Final inspection — full dimensional check, nozzle orientation, nameplate legibility, surface condition, and weight confirmation against the shipping document
• PED documentation package — CE Declaration of Conformity, Design Dossier index, NDE reports, MTR traceability matrix, hydrostatic test record, and nameplate photograph compiled per unit

Desert-climate export packaging. Internal preservation: nitrogen blanket on shell side and tube side with blanking flanges torqued to full bolt load. External: all machined flange faces coated with Denso paste and capped with steel blanking plates. Each unit wooden-crated with waterproof lining, desiccant packs, and humidity indicator cards. External crating treated for high-ambient-temperature storage. Gross weight and centre of gravity marked on crates per ISPM 15 phytosanitary requirements for Egyptian customs clearance.

Export documentation. Commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate of origin (China), CE Declarations of Conformity (one per vessel), and the full PED technical dossier were compiled and delivered to Air Products’ logistics team in advance of vessel loading, enabling pre-clearance review before arrival at the destination port.

Both units were shipped on schedule, meeting the fabrication delivery milestone set in Air Products’ project procurement plan.

Results

The two SGGE PHG250 steam generators were delivered to Egypt, cleared customs without documentation holds, and entered installation at the SGGE hydrogen production facility. The matched-pair approach meant that commissioning engineers on site were working with two units that had identical certified configurations — no discrepancies in nozzle orientation, weight, or documentation status between Unit 1 and Unit 2.

The PED CE certification on both units satisfied Air Products’ global procurement requirements without requiring any local Egyptian code re-certification, a common complication when equipment fabricated to non-PED standards is presented for installation on a PED-specified project. CE marking is accepted in Egypt for pressure equipment on internationally contracted industrial projects, and having that documentation in place from day one eliminated a potential commissioning bottleneck.

The Inconel 825 tube bundle and SB424 N08825/Duplex 2205 shell configuration provided the plant operator with a corrosion allowance and material service life appropriate for continuous-duty hydrogen production service — the outcome that justifies the higher material and fabrication cost compared to standard stainless alternatives.

Customer Voice

Air Products selected Lmart for this project based on demonstrated capability and placed the order through a competitive qualification process — the strongest form of supplier endorsement in capital equipment procurement.

“Two units, two complete PED documentation packages, on-time delivery to Egypt — Lmart executed this exactly as scoped. The matched-pair consistency made site commissioning straightforward, and their export packaging held up through a long transit to a hot-climate destination without any preservation issues. That level of execution is what keeps them on our approved vendor list.”

— Operations Director, Air Products SGGE Project (paraphrased from project review feedback)

Note: Lmart respects client confidentiality. Specific contact references are available upon request during the qualification process.