In the present study, application of catalytic membrane reactor as a novel approach for the flare gas recovery is proposed. A comprehensive two-dimensional non-isothermal model has been constructed to evaluate the performance of flare gas recovery process in the membrane reactor. The model is developed by taking into accounts the main chemical kinetics, heat and mass transfer phenomena and hydrogen permeation in the radial direction across a Pd–Ag membrane. The model predictions are validated based on different experimental results reported in literature. The impact of reactor operating conditions on the recovery process such as temperature and pressure, feed molar ratio and sweep gas ratio are investigated and discussed. The modeling results confirm that the flare gas conversion and hydrogen recovery improves with increasing the operating temperature, pressure and sweep ratio as a consequence of increasing the driving force for H₂ permeation through membrane. The environmental consideration revealed that by application of catalytic membrane reactor for the flare gas recovery of Asalouyeh gas processing plant (Iran), not only the equivalent mass of greenhouse gases emission reduces from 2179 kg/s to 36 kg/s, but also, 12.7 kg/s pure hydrogen will be produced by flare gas recovery at 750 K, 5 bar, sweep ratio of 5 and feed molar ratio of 4.

在本研究中，提出了将催化膜反应器作为火炬气回收的一种新方法。已经建立了一个综合的二维非等温模型来评估膜反应器中火炬气回收过程的性能。该模型是通过考虑主要化学动力学，传热和传质现象以及穿过Pd-Ag膜的径向上氢的渗透而开发的。基于文献中报道的不同实验结果验证了模型预测。研究和讨论了反应器运行条件对回收过程的影响，例如温度和压力，进料摩尔比和吹扫气比。₂透过膜渗透。出于环境方面的考虑，通过将催化膜反应器应用于伊朗阿萨鲁耶气体加工厂的火炬气回收，不仅温室气体的当量排放量从2179 kg / s降低到36 kg / s，而且降低了12.7通过在750 K，5 bar，吹扫比为5和进料摩尔比为4的情况下回收火炬气将产生kg / s纯氢。