Oxidative Coupling of Methane: A Comparison of Different Reactor Configurations

Abstract

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Oxidative Coupling of Methane in Membrane Reactors; A Techno-Economic Assessment

“…This OCM kinetics was initially developed and validated for specific packed bed lab-scale reactor conditions, and its validation when integrating membranes was not carried out. Nevertheless, the high C 2 reactor yields (up to 60%) achieved in this work with the membrane reactor are in agreement with other modelling OCM membrane reactor works [6]. However, these yields have never been validated with experiments.…”

“…It can be observed in the graph that the reactor yield achieved with the OCM membrane reactor configurations (both porous and dense), ranges from approximately 30% to above 60%, and it clearly overcomes the maximum reactor yield obtained with the conventional packed bed reactor (around 14% in the case in which the lowest ethylene price was obtained) [6,12]. This increase in the reactor performance is translated into a steep decrease in the ethylene price calculated from the process plant.…”

“…That is, low selectivity towards the desired products are expected when CH 4 conversion is increased and high C 2 s selectivity can just be kept when the methane conversion is carefully limited. Furthermore, the overall reaction is exothermic, leading to the possible formation of hotspots that lower the reactor yield unless a proper reactor cooling and heat management is carried out, as experimentally demonstrated in conventional packed bed reactors, widely studied for OCM [6]. There are many alternatives proposed in the open literature to deal with it [7], and they suggest that a deeper understanding of the mass and heat transfer in the system is required to accordingly modify the conventional reactor designs [8][9][10].…”

“…This is possible by improving the catalysts reactivity as well as by developing intensified reactor configurations. In the latter case, as it would be with a membrane reactor, the chances of competing with the conventional ethylene production technologies would be significantly increased because at higher conversion and selectivity, as it is theoretically to occur with this configuration [6], the necessity of importing electricity, shown as one of the main constrains of the conventional OCM [12], is expected to be reduced due to the easier separation train of the process which is carried out at cryogenic conditions.…”

Experimental Investigation of the Oxidative Coupling of Methane in a Porous Membrane Reactor: Relevance of Back-Permeation

“…The obtained results were in agreement with the literature [25,49], indicating that both the catalyst was active at the conditions of the experiments and that the operating conditions employed in this study were reasonable and led to consistent results. Specifically, the 20% C 2 yield reached using a packed bed reactor was on the higher edge of the published experimental work, and was already better than many other experimental works reported in the literature [21].…”