Multiobjective Optimization of a Porous Ceramic Membrane Reactor for Oxidative Coupling of Methane

Multiobjective optimization of a porous ceramic membrane reactor for oxidative coupling of methane has been studied with the elitist nondominated sorting genetic algorithm with jumping genes (NSGA-II-aJG). A mathematical model was first developed and "tuned" using some experimental results available in the literature. A parametric sensitivity analysis was carried out on the experimentally verified model to systematically investigate the effects of the process parameters on the performance of the membrane reactor. Several two objective optimization problems were performed at both operating and design stages using NSGA-II-aJG. Significant performance improvement in terms of C-2 yield and selectivity could be achieved when rigorous optimization was performed.