A Heat Exchanger Reactor Equipped with Membranes to Produce Dimethyl Ether from Syngas and Methyl Formate and Hydrogen from Methanol

Abstract

The energy crisis of the century is a motivation to present processes with higher energy efficiency for production of clean and renewable resources of energy. Hence, a catalytic heat exchanger reactor for production of dimethyl ether (DME) from syngas, and hydrogen and methyl formate (MF) from methanol is investigated in the present study. The proposed configuration is equipped with two different membranes for in-situ separation of products. Syngas is converted to DME through an exothermic reaction and it supplies a part of required energy for the methanol dehydrogenation reaction. Produced water in the exothermic side and produced hydrogen in the endothermic side are separated by using appropriate perm-selective membranes. In-situ separation of products makes the equilibrium reactions proceed toward higher conversion of reactants. A mathematical model based on reasonable assumptions is developed to evaluate molar and thermal behavior of the configuration. Performance of the system is aimed to enhance by obtaining optimum operating conditions. In this regard, Genetic Algorithm is applied. Performance of the heat exchanger double membrane reactor working under optimum conditions (OTMHR) is compared with a heat exchanger reactor without membrane (THR). OTMHR promotes methanol conversion to MF to %87.2, carbon monoxide conversion to %95.8 and hydrogen conversion to %64.6.