Modelling and Optimization of Industrial Scale Membrane Steam Reformer for Production of Hydrogen

With increasing demand for hydrogen as an environmentally friendly fuel, the catalytic steam reforming of natural gas is gaining prominence as the most attractive processes for production of hydrogen. In the conventional catalytic steam reformer (CSR), the maximum achievable conversion is limited by equilibrium. This limitation is overcome in a membrane steam reformer (MSR), in which the equilibrium is shifted towards higher methane conversion by continuously removing hydrogen from the reaction site and letting it permeate out through a palladium membrane. In spite of this advantage, no industrial scale application of MSR has so far been reported and this is mainly due to high cost of preparation of Pd membrane. In this work, a mathematical model is developed to represent the industrial scale operation of a MSR. The model is simulated to analyse the effect of various operating parameters on performance of MSR. An optimization study is carried out to obtain the optimum values of operating parameters at which the methane conversion is maximum. Effect of increasing the area of Pd membrane on the performance of MSR is studied. It is shown in this work that it is possible to achieve up to 99.9% methane conversion in MSR.