Separation of Hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide Using a Novel Membrane Reactor in Advanced Fossil Energy Conversion Process. Annual Report from 09/01/2000 to 8/31/2001

摘要

Inorganic membrane reactors offer the possibility of combining reaction and separation in a single operation at high temperatures to overcome the equilibrium limitations experienced in conventional reactor configurations. Such attractive features can be advantageously utilized in a number of potential commercial opportunities, which include dehydrogenation, hydrogenation, oxidative dehydrogenation, oxidation and catalytic decomposition reactions. However, to be cost effective, significant technological advances and improvements will be required to solve several key issues which include: (1) permselective thin solid film, (2) thermal, chemical and mechanical stability of the film at high temperatures, and (3) reactor engineering and module development in relation to the development of effective seals at high temperature and high pressure. In this project, we are working on the development and application of palladium and palladium-silver alloy thin-film composite membranes in membrane reactor-separator configuration for simultaneous production and separation of hydrogen and carbon dioxide at high temperature. From our research on Pd-composite membrane, we have demonstrated that the new membrane has significantly higher hydrogen flux with very high perm-selectivity than any of the membranes commercially available. The steam reforming of methane by equilibrium shift in Pdcomposite membrane reactor is being studied to demonstrate the potential application this new development. We designed and built a membrane reactor to study the reforming reaction. A twodimensional pseudo-homogeneous reactor model was developed to study the performance of the membrane reactor parametrically. The important results are presented in this report.