The Process Simulation of Natural Gas Steam Reforming in an Integrated Membrane Reactor

Abstract

Natural gas steam reforming due to the abundant availability of natural gas is the principal way to produce hydrogen. Higher purity of hydrogen can be obtained with membrane reactor. An integrated membrane reactor that useNi(10)/CeLaZr catalyst supported on SSiC ceramic foam is analyzed in this research. Respect to other literature works, foam catalyst is used in place of common pellet catalyst to have better performance of the process with higher distribution of temperature. A rating mode is carried out founding the correct heat transfer coefficient of the reactor. A modeling of the reactor is carried out in Aspen Plus using the correlation presented in literature for the catalyst foam, Sieverts' law and Numaguchi kinetic. The commonly used Xu and Froment kinetic is replaced by Numaguchi kinetic. Results on reactor performance show satisfactory agreement with experimental data. A study of methane conversion, hydrogen recovery, temperature of reactor, hydrogen partial pressure versus reactor length and membrane permeability is performed. The membrane permeability has positive effect on methane conversion and hydrogen recovery. For the other parameters the effect is negative. Future works should optimize the operation of the integrated membrane reactor to have the higher hydrogen production and methane conversion.