Recovery of hydrogen from hydrogenation tail gas plays an increasingly important role as hydrogen is a clean and efficient energy source in petrochemical industry. Hydrate separation process is a high-efficiency and energy-saving hydrogen recovery technology. We are committed to the industrialization of hydrate separation process, and has completed a preliminary pilot test in Maoming Petrochemical Company. This work aims to conduct the process modeling and optimization of hydrate separation. The improved Chen-Guo model is used to simulate the mass transfer units (hydrate flash reactor, hydrate dissociation reactor), and the process simulation is realized by calling Excel in the Aspen Plus environment through the interface toolbox. After optimizing the key process operating parameters, the results show that decreasing flash temperature instead of increasing flash pressure can improve the energy utilization efficiency. Compared with the pilot test, the total energy consumption of optimization is reduced from 138.60 kW to 111.77 kW, saving 19.36% of energy consumption, and the energy consumption of optimization for rising hydrogen mole fraction by 1% per mol product gas is 2.277 kJ/mol, which is 15.88% lower than that of pilot test (2.707 kJ/mol). (c) 2023 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.