A Novel Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC)-Assisted Catalytic Naphtha Reforming Process for Simultaneous Carbon Dioxide Capture and Hydrogen Production Enhancement

摘要

The application of chemical looping combustion (CLC) in order to eliminate the commonly used furnace in catalytic naphtha reforming has been analyzed. A mathematical model has been proposed to evaluate the performance of naphtha reforming coupled with chemical looping combustion (NR-CLC). NiO18-alpha-Al2O3 particles have been used as oxygen carriers in NR-CLC. These particles have been shown to have very high reactivity with complete CH4 conversion, because of the Ni-based oxygen carriers. In the NR-CLC configuration, three reactors have been applied. In the first and second reactors, CLC is coupled with naphtha reaction. In this new configuration, the reforming tubes have been located vertically inside the air reactor, so the catalytic naphtha reforming occurs in these fixed-bed catalytic tubes. The results obtained from the model proposed for NR-CLC have been compared with the corresponding results reported in the literature for conventional naphtha reforming (CNR). The values of some important parameters (such as temperature, mole fraction, molecular weight, aromatic and hydrogen production rates) that resulted from these two configurations have been compared. The results revealed that, by employing NR-CLC, the hydrogen and aromatics flow rates increases significantly. A great amount of almost-pure carbon dioxide can be captured by water removal from the fuel reactor through condensation.