Modeling and simulation of methanol reforming in palladium based membrane reactor on Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst for hydrogen production

In this study the modelling and simulation of methanol steam reforming in a membrane reactor is investigated. The palladium based membrane with Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst are carried out as the model system for hydrogen production. For modelling a rigorous 2-dimensioanl mathematical model is considered and then the results of simulation are compared with the experimental data. The result shows a very good agreement between the simulation and experimental results with mean relative error of almost 8%. Furthermore, the influence of some effective parameters such as the pressure of retentate zone, steam to methanol ratio and sweep gas factor on the hydrogen selectivity were studied. The results perform that increasing of pressure from 1.5 to 2.5 bar can increase the selectivity about 3%. Also, increasing the ratio of water to methanol from 1 to 3 can increase the selectivity of hydrogen nearly 13%. Change in the sweep gas factor affects the hydrogen selectivity in the way that increasing of sweep gas factor up to 7 can increase the selectivity about 4.5%. Furthermore, the 2D concentration profile analysis for methanol concentration in the radial and axial directions has shown that the changes in the radial direction is negligible because of the small reactor diameter.