Experimental demonstration of the reverse flow catalytic membrane reactor concept for energy efficient syngas production. Part 2: Model development

A detailed reactor model has been developed to describe the experimental results that were obtained with the reverse flow catalytic membrane reactor (RFCMR) demonstration unit, presented in Part 1. The reactor model is based on a model that was used previously [Smit, J., van Sint 2005b. Annaland, M., Kuipers, J.A.M., 2005b. Feasibility study of a reverse flow catalytic membrane reactor with porous membranes for the production of syngas. Chemical Engineering Science 60(24), 6971-6982] to demonstrate the conceptual feasibility of the RFCMR concept at industrially relevant conditions. To accurately capture the radial heat losses and heat buffering effects in the RFCMR demonstration unit, the existing model has been extended with a detailed description of the two-dimensional heat transport in the insulation layer. By simulating a number of experimental cases discussed in Part 1, it is shown that the radial heat losses and therefore also the axial temperature profiles in the RFCMR demonstration unit can be very well described, without using any fitting parameters. Furthermore, it is shown that also the syngas composition can be predicted reasonably well by simply assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium. The very good agreement between the experimental results and the predictions of the reactor model clearly support the results of the conceptual feasibility study. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.