Study of a membrane reactor for WGSR: Experimental and modelling results

M. ESPERANZA ADROVER; CAROLINA CORNAGLIA; JOHN MÚNERA; EDUARDO LOMBARDO; DANIEL BORIO; M. N. PEDERNERA

Conferencia; 11th International Conference on Catalysis in Membrane reactors; 2013

Hydrogen production has been extensively studied in the last two decades as a key element of the energetic matrix. Hydrogen is industrially obtained from steam re-forming of natural gas or heavier hydrocarbons. In the case of fuel cell applications, this hydrogen stream needs to be purified by means of the water gas shift reaction (WGSR) and the Preferential Oxidation of CO (CO-PrOx) to avoid poisoning of the PEM fuel-cell anode catalyst. As the WGS reaction rate is slower than the rates of the other reactions of the ultrapure H2 production chain, the WGS reactor is the largest one of the generation-purification system [1]. An attractive alternative is to condense the two previous purification stages in a membrane reactor (MR). Most of the previous theoretical studies concerning membrane reactors for the WGS have proposed isothermal mathematical models with negligible mass-transfer re-sistances on the gas-solid interface [2]. Certainly, the use of pseudohomogeneous mathematical models is appropriate to reproduce experimental results when the controlling step is the catalytic reaction. However, for other operating conditions (e.g, in the presence of high catalyst activities and/or for the typical low process flow rates used at labor-atory scale) the influence of the mass transfer limitations should be taken into account by means of heterogeneous models The aim of the present study is to analyze the effect of the mass-transport resistances on the lab reactor´s behav-ior by means of a heterogeneous model. A Pt(0.6)/La2O3(27).SiO2 catalyst very active, stable, selective and non-carbon forming was synthesized for use in the membrane reactor.