Synthesis gas production in a novel hydrogen and oxygen perm-selective membranes tri-reformer for methanol production

Tri-reforming is a synergetic combination of carbon dioxide reforming, steam reforming and partial oxidation of methane in a single unit for effective production of synthesis gas. In this study, a novel multi-tubular fixed bed tri-reformer assisted with hydrogen and oxygen perm-selective membranes is proposed for synthesis gas production for methanol synthesis reactor. This reactor can be used instead of conventional steam methane reformer (SMR) and conventional auto-thermal reformer (ATR). A distributed mathematical model is developed for tri-reformer membrane reactor which consists of three sides for synthesis gas production. Air is fed co-currently into the oxygen perm-selective membrane in the inner tube and oxygen permeates into the reaction side for oxidative reforming of methane. Selective permeation of hydrogen via the Pd-based membrane is achieved by co-current flow of sweeping gas through the permeation side. The results of tri-reformer are compared with the corresponding predicted results by HYSIS simulation software under the same feed condition. The superiorities of this novel configuration to optimized tri-reformer without any membrane (Arab Aboosadi, Z., Jahanmiri, A.H., Rahimpour, M.R., 2011. Optimization of tri-reformer reactor to produce synthesis gas for methanol production using differential evolution (DE) method. Appl. Energy. 88, 2691–2701) are in-situ oxygen production (44.7% saving in supplying oxygen from external), high methane conversion and hydrogen yield at lower reactant input temperature and reduction of hot spot temperature in the catalytic bed.