Design of membrane reactor for steam methane reforming based on non-uniform catalyst and membrane distribution

Abstract

Membrane reactor was one of the multifunctional reactors used to simultaneously synthesize and purify a desirable chemical product. It could also be used for hydrogen generation via steam methane reforming reaction. In the conventional membrane reactor, membrane and catalyst were uniformly distributed along the reactor length. This configuration could not actually offer optimum performance since membrane area near the fuel gas entrance was not fully utilized due to low hydrogen partial pressure at the retentate chamber near the gas entrance. By the reason above, the membrane reactor with the distribution of membrane allocation and catalyst distribution were proposed to resolve these issues. In this work, membrane reactor was divided into two sections. Each reactor section contained different catalyst density and membrane area; however, to standardize this study, the total amount of catalyst density and membrane area were kept at constant values. Methane conversion and hydrogen yield were considered as the performance indicators. The results from this study indicated that, as the hydrogen permeability through the membrane was low, non-uniform membrane distribution membrane reactor could offer significantly higher performance compared to uniform distribution membrane reactor. However, the effect of catalyst packing distribution did not significantly affect the performance of non-uniform distribution membrane reactor.