Membrane reactors are an innovative technology with huge application potentialities forequilibrium limited endothermic reactions. Assembling a membrane selective to a reactionproduct avoids the equilibrium conditions to be achieved, supporting the reactions at lower operating temperatures. Taking as an example the natural gas steam reforming, a methane conversion around 98% can be reached imposing an operating temperature of 823 K, much lower than that of the traditional process. In the present paper, a stringent analysis of heat power requirement needed to carry out the natural gas steam reforming process byapplying a membrane reactor is made. The simulations allows to understand how the mainoperating parameters (inlet temperature, inlet methane flow-rate, steam to carbon ratio, ratio between sweeping steam and inlet methane, operating reaction pressure) influence the total heat power required by the process, divided among power contributions for thereaction heat duty, reactant steam and permeation steam generation and preheating.Moreover, the specific thermal energy per mole of pure H2 is computed and assessed.Optimizing the operating conditions set, a specific thermal energy per mole of pure hydrogen of 92.3 kWh kmol-1 is obtained corresponding to a total thermal power of 687.4 kW required to convert, in a single membrane reactor, a methane flow-rate of 2 kmol h-1 (GHSV = 9.590 h-1) with a conversion around 98%.

Methane membrane steam reforming: heat duty assessment

DE FALCO M;PIEMONTE V;DI PAOLA L;
2014-01-01

Abstract

Membrane reactors are an innovative technology with huge application potentialities forequilibrium limited endothermic reactions. Assembling a membrane selective to a reactionproduct avoids the equilibrium conditions to be achieved, supporting the reactions at lower operating temperatures. Taking as an example the natural gas steam reforming, a methane conversion around 98% can be reached imposing an operating temperature of 823 K, much lower than that of the traditional process. In the present paper, a stringent analysis of heat power requirement needed to carry out the natural gas steam reforming process byapplying a membrane reactor is made. The simulations allows to understand how the mainoperating parameters (inlet temperature, inlet methane flow-rate, steam to carbon ratio, ratio between sweeping steam and inlet methane, operating reaction pressure) influence the total heat power required by the process, divided among power contributions for thereaction heat duty, reactant steam and permeation steam generation and preheating.Moreover, the specific thermal energy per mole of pure H2 is computed and assessed.Optimizing the operating conditions set, a specific thermal energy per mole of pure hydrogen of 92.3 kWh kmol-1 is obtained corresponding to a total thermal power of 687.4 kW required to convert, in a single membrane reactor, a methane flow-rate of 2 kmol h-1 (GHSV = 9.590 h-1) with a conversion around 98%.
2014
Selective membrane; Process Heat Duty; Hydrogen production; Natural gas steam reforming
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12610/2942
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