Simultaneous hydrogen and aromatics enhancement by obtaining optimum temperature profile and hydrogen removal in naphtha reforming process; a novel theoretical study

In this novel theoretical study, the dimensionless length of the conventional naphtha reforming reactor has been discretized into differential segments and three different cases have been investigated in this regard. In the first case, inlet temperature of each segment has been optimized via differential evolution (DE) method to obtain the optimized temperature profile along the reactors by joining the achieved inlet temperatures for each segment on the figure. Same approach has been applied in the second case in order to achieve optimum hydrogen permeation rate. In the third case, the optimum profiles of temperature and hydrogen removal have been obtained using DE optimization technique using the same approach. The objective of each optimization case is to maximize the hydrogen and aromatics production rate. As it is discussed further, unlike previous studies, application of optimum temperature and hydrogen permeation profiles simultaneously boosts hydrogen and aromatics production rate significantly. 10% and 24% enhancement in hydrogen and aromatics production rates can be achieved by applying the novel theoretical concepts in the conventional naphtha reforming process.