A SIMULATION STUDY OF METHANOL REFORMING IN MEMBRANE REACTOR

Abstract

Methanol Reforming to produce hydrogen is today considered as one of the promising methods for fliel cell application. From thermodynamic point of view the yield of methanol reforming is limited by the equilibrium. In order to increase the hydrogen yield, it is necessary to in situ removal of carbon monoxide produced during reaction. A membrane reactor satisfies this situation by selectively removal of some reaction products from the reaction system. In the present dissertation work, a steady state model for isothermal conditions has been developed which incorporates 7 differential equations along with 7 boundary conditions for state variables and appropriate constitutive relationships. The model equations are solved by using the MATLAB ODE (Ordinary Differential Equation) solvers. Dense membrane is considered in the membrane reactor modeling to carry out the steam reforming of methanol. The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility to increase the CH3OH conversion into hydrogen in membrane reactor with respect to traditional reactor. A comparison study of membrane reactor and traditional reactor is performed in present work for CH3OH conversion, hydrogen selectivity at different temperature and feed ratio. In the view of above simulation results it is concluded that the membrane reactor is showing better performance with respect to traditional reactor at any temperature.