Document Type

Article

Abstract

Direct conversion of methane into ethylene through the oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) is a technically important reaction. However, conventional co-fed fixed-bed OCM reactors still face serious challenges in conversion and selectivity. In this paper, we apply a finite element model to simulate OCM reaction in a plug-flow CO2 /O2 transport membrane (CTM) reactor with a directly captured CO2 and O2 mixture as a soft oxidizer. The CTM is made of three phases: molten carbonate, 20% Sm-doped CeO2 , and LiNiO2 . The membrane parameters are first validated by CO2 /O2 flux data obtained from CTM experiments. The OCM reaction is then simulated along the length of tubular plug-flow reactors filled with a La2 O3 -CaO-modified CeO2 catalyst bed, while a mixture of CO2 /O2 is gradually added through the wall of the tubular membrane. A 12-step OCM kinetic mechanism is considered in the model for the catalyst bed and validated by data obtained from a co-fed fixed-bed reactor. The modeled results indicate a much-improved OCM performance by membrane reactor in terms of C2 -yield and CH4 conversion rate over the state-of-the-art, co-fed, fixed-bed reactor. The model further reveals that improved performance is fundamentally rooted in the gradual methane conversion with CO2 /O2 offered by the plug-flow membrane reactor.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1149/1945-7111/ac6ae7

Rights

© 2022 The Author(s). Published on behalf of The Electrochemical Society by IOP Publishing Limited. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

APA Citation

Li, X., Huang, K., Noah Van Dam, & Jin, X. (2022). Performance Projection of a High-Temperature CO2 Transport Membrane Reactor for Combined CO2 Capture and Methane-to-Ethylene Conversion. Journal of the Electrochemical Society, 169(5).https://doi.org/10.1149/1945-7111/ac6ae7

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