Sorption enhanced reaction process for direct production of fuel-cell grade hydrogen by low temperature catalytic steam–methane reforming

Abstract

New experimental data are reported to demonstrate that a sorption enhanced reaction (SER) concept can be used to directly produce fuel-cell grade H 2 (<20 ppm CO) by carrying out the catalytic, endothermic, steam–methane reforming (SMR) reaction (CH 4 + 2H 2O ↔ CO 2 + 4H 2) in presence of a CO 2 selective chemisorbent such as K 2CO 3 promoted hydrotalcite at reaction temperatures of 520 and 550 °C, which are substantially lower than the conventional SMR reaction temperatures of 700–800 °C. The H 2 productivity of the sorption enhanced reactor can be large, and the conversion of CH 4 to H 2 can be very high circumventing the thermodynamic limitations of the SMR reaction due to the application of the Le Chetalier's principle in the SER concept. Mathematical simulations of a cyclic two-step SER concept showed that the H 2 productivity of the process (moles of essentially pure H 2 produced per kg of catalyst–chemisorbent admixture in the reactor per cycle) is much higher at a reaction temperature of 590 °C than that at 550 or 520 °C. On the other hand, the conversion of feed CH 4 to high purity H 2 product is relatively high (>99+%) at all three temperatures. The conversion is much higher than that in a conventional catalyst-alone reactor at these temperatures, and it increases only moderately (<1%) as the reaction temperature is increased from 520 to 590 °C. These results are caused by complex interactions of four phenomena. They are (a) favorable thermodynamic equilibrium of the highly endothermic SMR reaction at the higher reaction temperature, (b) faster kinetics of SMR reaction at higher temperatures, (c) favorable removal of CO 2 from the reaction zone at lower temperatures, and (d) higher cyclic working capacity for CO 2 chemisorption at higher temperature.