Aspen Plus™ Process Design For The Liquid Hydrogen Production By Steam Reforming Of Used Automotive Lubricating Oil

A study was carried out to develop a process for the production of pure liquid hydrogen from used automotive lubricating oil using Aspen Plus™ Chemical Process Simulator (CPS). The reformer was simulated as a Gibbs reactor to fractionate the large oil molecules. A methane reformer converts methane into CO and hydrogen. Varying the temperature of the reformer while keeping the used oil input constant at 1 kmole/hr did not have a significant impact on hydrogen production. Most of the hydrogen was produced within the reformer. The methane reformer, as well as the water gas shift reactor, enhanced the production of hydrogen. The plant generates its energy autothermally via burning the off-gas stream with air. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 2006 AIChE Spring National Meeting (Orlando, FL 4/23-27/2006)