INVESTIGADORES
PEDERNERA Marisa Noemi
artículos
Título:
Heat effects ina a membrane reactor for the water gas shift reaction
Autor/es:
M.E. ADROVER; E. LÓPEZ; D.O. BORIO; M.N. PEDERNERA
Revista:
STUDIES IN SURFACE SCIENCE AND CATALYSIS
Editorial:
Elsevier
Referencias:
Año: 2007 vol. 167 p. 183 - 188
ISSN:
0167-2991
Resumen:
Most
of the hydrogen is produced industrially by steam reforming of
hydrocarbons (mainly natural gas) or alcohols (e.g., for fuel cell
applications). The process gas stream coming from the steam reformer is
composed by H2, CO, CO2, H2O and small amounts of unconverted reactants (CH4).
The CO concentration of the gas leaving the reformer must be reduced up
to a specified level, with two main goals: 1) increase the H2 production rate and 2) purify the process stream. To these ends, the Water Gas Shift Reaction (WGSR) is widely used:
The
reaction is moderately exothermic and strongly controlled by the
chemical equilibrium, which is favored at low temperatures. In small
scale processes, such as the fuel processing for fuel cells (e.g., PEM
cells) normally the WGSR is carried out at an intermediate temperature
level, requiring large reactor volumes to reach the necessarily high CO
conversions.
An
attractive alternative to increase the CO conversion is the membrane
reactor (MR). The main idea of this design is the selective permeation
of reaction products (e.g., H2) to shift the equilibrium
towards products and consequently decrease the CO outlet concentration,
or reduce the amount of catalyst for a desired conversion level.
The
purpose of the present work, where the performance of the MR is
simulated and compared with that of the conventional fixed bed reactor
(CR). To compare both types of reactors, two extreme operating
conditions are selected: isothermal and adiabatic operations.