%0 Journal Article
%A Brunetti, A.
%A Caravella, A.
%A Fernandez, E.
%A Pacheco Tanaka, D. A.
%A Gallucci, F.
%A Drioli, E.
%A Curcio, E.
%A Viviente, J. L.
%A Barbieri, G.
%T Syngas upgrading in a membrane reactor with thin Pd-alloy supported membrane
%D 2015
%@ 0360-3199
%X In hydrogen production, the syngas streams produced by reformers and/or coal gasification plants contain a large amount of H2 and CO in need of upgrading. To this purpose, reactors using Pd-based membranes have been widely studied as they allow separation and recovery of a pure hydrogen stream. However, the high cost of Pd-membranes is one of the main limitations for scaling up technology. Therefore, many researchers are now pursuing the possibility of using supported membranes with as thin as possible Pd-alloy layers. In this work, the upgrading of a syngas stream is experimentally investigated in a water gas shift membrane reactor operated in a high temperature range with an ultra-thin supported membrane (3.6 micron-thick). The membrane permeance was measured before and after catalyst packing and also after reaction for 2100 h of operation in total. Membrane reactor performance was evaluated as a function of operating conditions such as temperature, pressure, gas hourly space velocity, feed molar ratio, and sweep gas. A CO conversion significantly higher than the thermodynamics upper limit of a traditional reactor was achieved, even at high gas hourly space velocities and a 25% less reaction volume than that of a traditional reactor was enough to achieve a 90% equilibrium conversion.
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