High-temperature membrane reactors: potential and problems

Abstract

The most recent literature in the "eld of membrane reactors is reviewed, four years after an analogous e!ort of ours (Saracco et al., 1994), describing shortly the potentials of these reactors, which now seem to be well established, and focusing mostly on problems towards practical exploitation. Since 1994, progress has been achieved in several areas (sol}gel deposition of defect free sol}gel derived membranes, reduction in thickness of Pd membranes, synthesis of zeolite membranes) whereas stagnation was noticed in some others (high-temperature sealing of membranes into modules, scaling-up of membrane reactor, etc.). As a result, despite the still increasing research e!orts, industrial application does not seem to be round the corner, yet. However, several non-permselective membrane reactor opportunities with currently available membranes might pave the way for more sophisticated applications.

Numerical simulation of ion transport membrane reactors: Oxygen permeation and transport and fuel conversion

“…In a reactive process, the high purity oxygen leads to better control over the quality of the product. ITM reactors not only improve oxygen permeation rates, but also deliver product streams with higher selectivity than conventional reactors [19].…”

Analysis of a Membrane Reactor: Influence of Membrane Characteristics and Operating Conditions

“…Among the different ways in which the separation function is integrated within the reactor, the integration of reaction and permeation has been attracting considerable academic interest and a number of reviews have appeared on this subject (Saracco et al, 1999;Sirkar et al, 1999;Julbe et al, 2001;W)ltinger et al, 2001;Dixon, 2001). The use of membrane reactors with membranes performing a variety of functions, their advantages, disadvantages, future potential etc.…”

“…have been critically analyzed in these reviews. Reports are available on membrane reactors having outperformed the conventional reactors for many reactions such as esterification (Lim et al, 2002;Zhu et al, 1996), hydrogenation, oxidation (Saracco et al, 1999), biochemical reactions (W)ltinger et al, 2001), photo-catalytic reactions for pollutant decomposition (Molinari et al, 2001), and electrochemical reactions (fuel cell) (Sundmacher et al, 1999;Sundmacher et al, 2001). …”

Simulation of a Palladium Membrane Reactor for Dehydrogenation of Ethylbenzene.

“…There are a number of papers addressing progresses on this topic (Zaman and Chakma, 1994;Kikuchi, 1995;Soria, 1995;Armor, 1998;Gryaznov, 1999;Saracco et al, 1999).…”