MODELLING AND SIMULATION OF SYN GAS PRODUCTION VIA ZINC OXIDE REDUCTION BY METHANE

Abstract

Zinc oxide reduction by methane is an alternate process for zinc and syngas production, since methane is much more reactive than coke hence operating temperature can be considerably reduced. And the exhaust of this process (syngas) is very helpful for the production of various petrochemicals. In literature low conversion values of CH4 are reported for this reaction in many type of reactors, consequently pneumatic bed reactor which has high mass transfer and heat transfer efficiencies and larger contact area between catalyst and fluid are current areas of investigation for zinc oxide reduction by methane. Ebrahimi et al. (2012) reported experimental data for zinc oxide and methane reaction in pneumatic bed reactor which has been used for validation in the present study. In the present work, a model based on shrinking core of the catalysts particle and other equations commonly used in pneumatic bed reactor was developed. Methane conversion from the model matched well to that of the experimental data reported in the literature. Model was employed under various operating conditions and the effect of various parameters such as pressure, temperature and gas hourly flow velocity was studied. It is found that Methane conversion increase with increase in temperature and decreases with increase in pressure and GHSV. At the optimum condition (T = 1250K, P = latm and 50 hou('GHSV), maximum CH4 conversion of 97% was predicted.