Simultaneous production of xylenes and hydrogen in an optimized membrane-assisted thermally coupled reactor using an elaborate reaction network

Abstract

In this paper, an optimized membrane-assisted thermally coupled reactor, as well-known equipment for process intensification (PI), is proposed for simultaneous production of highly-valuable xylenes and pure hydrogen. In the proposed configuration, transalkylation process (exothermic reaction) and dehydrogenation of methylcyclohexane (endothermic reaction) take place simultaneously in two different sides, and a hydrogen perm-selective Pd/Ag membrane is utilized to separate pure hydrogen from the endothermic side. A comprehensive reaction network is applied for the exothermic side with the aim of providing a reliable reactor model. The operating conditions of the membrane-assisted thermally coupled reactor are optimized using Differential Evolution (DE) method with 10 decision variables. The model results of conventional reactor are validated with the plant data and a reasonable agreement is achieved. In order to verify the performance of the membrane-assisted thermally coupled reactor configuration, the modeling results are compared with that of the conventional reactor, which reveals that the optimized thermally coupled membrane reactor results in more xylenes yield and lower temperature in exothermic side.