HYDROGEN PRODUCTION BY PARTIAL OXIDATION AND WATER GAS SHIFT REACTION

Abstract

Hydrogen is clean energy carrier and forecast to become a major energy source in future. Production of hydrogen from methane, naphtha, heavy oil and coal has achieved increased importance in recent years. This is because of the increased demand for hydrogen, both for petroleum refining processes such as hydrotreating and hydrocracking and for the petrochemical use in the production of methanol, methanol to gasoline (MTG), ammonia and hydrocarbon synthesis via Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) processes. In the present study, a one dimensional non-isothermal model for oxygen permeable membrane reactor has been developed to simulate the partial oxidation of methane to produce hydrogen. The performance of two fixed bed reactors (FBR) viz, one with pure 02 in feed (FBR1), other with air in feed (FBR2), and a membrane reactor (MR) having air in non-reaction side have been studied at various feed conditions and inlet temperatures in order to investigate the effect of these parameters on conversion of methane and yield of hydrogen. The fixed bed reactor with pure 02 in feed has been found to provide better performance as compared to fixed bed reactor with air and membrane reactor. The model equations have been solved for mentioned operating and boundary conditions by using ODE solver in MATLAB R2007a.