Abstract: Application of autothermal sorbent regeneration procedure, based on internal catalytic combustion of lean air-fuel mixtures in the super-adiabatic regime of traveling heat wave, as shown by process simulation, will provide fast and efficient sorbent regeneration with minimum heat losses to environment and minimum inefficient energy wasting. Application of low-cost and available combustible fuels (such as recycled unused hydrogen from fuel cell or methane from initial natural gas) will result in advantageous economic and energy-saving efficiency of the proposed technology in comparison with existing processes. The evident advantage of the proposed regeneration mode is that combustion heat produced is distributed uniformly around the bed sequence and, therefore, the regeneration efficiency does not depend upon the bed diameter. This circumstance opens the way for creation of cheap and reliable adiabatic packed bed methane processors of unlimited processing capacity instead of either conventional single-tube reactors with external heating with very limited productivity or expensive and complicated multi-tubular reactors for high capacities.

Cite: Zagoruiko A.N.
Sorption-Enhanced Steam Reforming of Hydrocarbons with Autothermal Sorbent Regeneration in a Super-Adiabatic Heat Wave of Catalytic Combustion Reaction
The 8th Asian-Pacific Chemical Reaction Engineering Symposia 12-15 Nov 2017