Autothermal Reforming of Methane with Integrated CO2 Capture in a Novel Fluidized Bed Membrane Reactor. Part 2 Comparison of Reactor Configurations

The reactor performance of two novel fluidized bed membrane reactor configurations for hydrogen production with integrated CO2 capture by autothermal reforming of methane (experimentally investigated in Part 1) have been compared using a phenomenological reactor model over a wide range of operating conditions (temperature, pressure, H2O/CH4 ratio and membrane area). It was found that the methane combustion configuration (where part of the CH4 is combusted in situ with pure O2) largely outperforms the hydrogen combustion concept (oxidative sweeping combusting part of the permeated H2) at low H2O/CH4 ratios (