Sustainable Hydrogen Production from Biogas Using Sorption-Enhanced Reforming

The interest in the use of upgraded biogas for the introduction of renewable hydrogen through reforming technologies is steadily increasing. Renewable hydrogen as fuel for power production or transportation is one major application area. The novel sorption-enhanced reforming (SER) technology including CO2 capture has the potential to introduce renewable hydrogen to the marked and at the same time provide bio-CO2 that can be used to produce biomethane through the Sabatier process. This paper presents the work carried out to design and build a small SER prototype using a dual bubbling fluidized bed reactor system. Reactor modeling and advanced computational fluid dynamics have been used to dimension and evaluate the performance of the installation. Preliminary laboratory tests have allowed validating the design and the system specifications. Finally, initial batch tests run on the installation have proved the feasibility of operating the process. The next phase of this work will involve the coupling of the solids circulation loop to operate the system continuously