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Efficiency penalty analysis for pure H 2 production processes with CO 2 capture
Author(s) -
Feng Wei,
Ji Peijun,
Tan Tianwei
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
aiche journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 167
eISSN - 1547-5905
pISSN - 0001-1541
DOI - 10.1002/aic.11052
Subject(s) - combustion , chemistry , hydrogen , process engineering , work (physics) , process (computing) , oxygen , hydrogen production , steam reforming , process simulation , thermodynamics , chemical engineering , computer science , engineering , organic chemistry , physics , operating system
The conventional steam‐reforming (CSR) process is a major process for the production of pure hydrogen from natural gas with CO 2 as the main by‐product. In this work, based on the CSR process, several alternative H 2 ‐producing processes with CO 2 capture are simulated and analyzed. The alternative processes capture the CO 2 by concentrating the CO 2 through the approaches including burning some of the separated H 2 instead of CH 4 in the furnace, using pure oxygen instead of air for the combustion of fuel gas, applying a prereformer to reduce the usage of pure oxygen, and applying an H 2 ‐membrane in the steam reformer to separate pure H 2 . The reactors of the CSR process and the alternative processes with CO 2 capture were simulated based on the kinetic models of the reactions. The CSR process and the alternative processes were evaluated in terms of the thermodynamic efficiency, the amount of high pressure (HP) H 2 produced per mole of CH 4 , the amount of CO 2 produced per mole of HP H 2 , and the CO 2 captured per mol of HP H 2 . The efficiency penalties for CO 2 capture of the alternative processes were compared and discussed. © 2006 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2007