THEORITICAL STUDY OF PALLADIUM MEMBRANE REACTOR PERFORMANCE DURING PROPANE DEHYDROGENATION USING CFD METHOD
ABSTRACT: This study presents
a 2D-axisymmetric computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model to investigate the
performance Pd membrane reactor (MR) during propane dehydrogenation process for
hydrogen production. The proposed CFD model provided the local information of
temperature and component concentration for the driving force analysis. After
investigation of mesh independency of CFD model, the validation of CFD model
results was carried out by other modeling data and a good agreement between CFD
model results and theoretical data was achieved. Indeed, in the present model,
a tubular reactor with length of 150 mm was considered, in which the
Pt-Sn-K/Al2O3 as catalyst were filled in reaction zone. Hence, the effects of
the important operating parameter (reaction temperature) on the performances of
membrane reactor (MR) were studied in terms of propane conversion and hydrogen
yield. The CFD results showed that the suggested MR system during propane
dehydrogenation reaction presents higher performance with respect to once
obtained in the conventional reactor (CR). In particular, by applying Pd
membrane, was found that propane conversion can be increased from 41% to 49%.
Moreover, the highest value of propane conversion (X = 91%) was reached in case
of Pd-Ag MR. It was also established that the feed flow rate of the MR is to be
the one of the most important factors defining efficiency of the propane
dehydrogenation process.
Author: Kamran Ghasemzadeh,
Milad Mohammad Alinejad, Milad Ghahremani, Rahman Zeynali, Amin Pourgholi
Journal Code: jpkimiagg170026
