Abstract
The present work is a study of CO2 Reforming of Methane (DRM) carried out in a catalytic Pd-based membrane reactor. A detailed thermodynamic analysis is carried out, calculating the chemical equilibrium parameters in two different cases: (a) DRM along with the Reverse Water Gas Shift (RWGS) reaction and (b) DRM along with both RWGS and the Boudouard Reaction (BR). The performance of membrane reactor is then experimentally analyzed in terms of methane conversion, hydrogen recovery and H2/CO reaction selectivity by varying feed pressure and CO2/CH4 feed molar ratio and 500 °C and GHSV = 100 h−1. Among the obtained results, a CH4 conversion of about 26% and a H2 recovery of 47% are achieved at low feed pressures, exceeding the traditional reactor equilibrium conversion. This effect can be attributed to the favorable thermodynamics coupled to the hydrogen permeation through the membrane. This study further demonstrates the general effectiveness of membrane-integrated reaction processes, which makes the production of syngas more efficient and performing, providing important environmental benefits.
Highlights
In the last decade, the energy demand has been growing by 1.2% a year and fossil fuels still maintain a production share of ca. 75%
The thermodynamic equilibrium of Dry reforming of methane (DRM) along with some side-reactions is evaluated by minimization of the total Gibbs free energy, which is carried out in the MATLAB® environment
This work consists of an analysis of dry reforming of methane in a catalytic Pd-based membrane reactor
Summary
The energy demand has been growing by 1.2% a year and fossil fuels still maintain a production share of ca. 75%. More in general, diversifying such sources in order to assure supply, and in the meantime increase effort dedicated to the reduction of environmental problems, has led to the development of alternative technologies designed to enhance both the efficiency and environmental acceptability of energy production, storage and use, in particular for power generation [4]. Among these technologies, the exploitation of light hydrocarbons is surely the main realistic energy source, since they allow both power generation and environmentally-friendly fuel production [5,6]. A very active research area is the development of an “artificial leaf” [12] that collects energy in a similar way as a natural one [13,14], combining water oxidation and CO reduction to produce liquid fuels by artificial photosynthesis; the development of this technology is far from real scale, owing to limitations on solar energy-to-chemical conversion efficiency, costs, robustness and of easy construction [13]
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