Approche théorique pour l’étude d’un réacteur membranaire pour la production d’hydrogène. Application pour la réaction du vaporéformage et de l’oxydation du méthane

Abstract

In the current study, a theoretical analysis of the behaviors of the reaction of methane steam reforming and partial oxidation of methane performed in a palladium membrane reactor was carried out. In order to determine the optimal conditions leading to the improvement of the hydrogen production from these reactions, a mathematical model was developed to simulate the operating parameters. The main results show that the model can predict the performance of the membrane reactor. In the case of the methane steam reforming, it was found that under certain operating conditions, a nearly complete conversion of methane could be achieved and a large quantity of hydrogen could be recovered. The study of the partial oxidation of methane under steady state conditions show that it is appropriate to switch between oxygen to methane and steam to methane ratios in order to obtain a better performance in term of hydrogen recovery. The study of the mean reaction under periodic operation was also investigated. The periodic operations are supposed to be created by forcing some inputs cyclically using sinusoidal and square functions. It was found that to achieve process intensification is to operate the process in a periodic way. The main results show that there is an optimum amplitude of manipulated inputs leads to a maximum of hydrogen recovery. It is noteworthy that the comparison between the predicted performance via the sinusoidal and the square ways show that the better average performance was obtained with the square way. Furthermore, the variation of the steam to methane and the sweeping gas ratios via a square way both in phase while the oxygen to methane ratio is 180° out of phase at an amplitude of 0.1 could boost the performance, especially in term of pure hydrogen recovery.