Techno-Economic Assessment of the One-Step Co2 Conversion to Dimethyl Ether in a Membrane-Assisted Process

Evaluation of the Relevant Mass and Heat Transfer Phenomena in a Packed Bed Membrane Reactor for the Direct Conversion of CO2 to Dimethyl Ether

“…The reaction conditions used to simulate the PBR and PBMR are reported in Table 6. A detailed discussion on the selection of these conditions, as well as on the optimization and sizing procedure adopted for the PBR and PBMR is already reported in our previous work [32]. A GHSV of 32.11 h − 1 was found sufficient to approach the thermodynamic equilibrium in the PBR for a catalytic bed composed of 50 wt% of HZSM-5.…”

“…In a second study, we have further optimized the membrane reactor, proposing the circulation of boiling water in an external jacket as an effective heat management solution. The membrane reactor was then scaled-up and integrated at flowsheet level, to investigate its potential to improve the process efficiency and economics [32].…”

“…14) is adopted since the temperature profile in the two zones is the same (i.e., T R = T P = T), in line with experimental observations. To approach isothermal conditions, heat removal occurs via the evaporation of water (i.e., latent heat exchange) at constant temperature (T w ), circulating in an external jacket [32].…”

“…In this section, we discuss the effect of intra-particle diffusion phenomena on the performance of the PBR and PBMR at relevant operating conditions (i.e., temperature, pressure) and at a space velocity which is compatible with industrial scale (i.e., which guarantees approach to thermodynamic equilibrium). Reaction conditions were selected based on preliminary simulations and reactor scale-up/optimization reported in our previous study [32], carried out with simplified models, which do not consider any effect of internal/external mass and heat transfer phenomena.…”