Glycerol steam reforming for hydrogen production: Traditional versus membrane reactor

Abstract

A phenomenological model was developed for predicting the performance of a traditional reactor (TR) versus a membrane reactor (MR) for hydrogen production via glycerol steam reforming (GSR), which was validated against experimental data. The results were evaluated in terms of glycerol conversion and products yield and selectivity, and for the MR the hydrogen recovery was also accounted. A parametric analysis was carried out for different ranges of conditions, namely: temperatures of 773–973 K for the TR and 673–773 K for the MR (due to thermal restrictions of Pd-based membranes), water-to-glycerol feed ratios (WGFRs) of 4–12 and total pressures of 100–500 kPa. For the same operating conditions (773 K, WGFR of 12 and 300 kPa), the MR with a membrane thickness of 15 μm showed a significant improvement in the H2 yield of 74% when compared to the TR (with a simultaneous decrease of 87% in the CH4 yield). Finally, when the maximum amount of H2 production was analyzed for both reactor configurations, an increase of 15% was observed in the MR with a membrane thickness of 15 μm while allowing to reduce the operating temperature by 200 K as compared to the TR.