Comparative techno-economic analysis for steam methane reforming in a sorption-enhanced membrane reactor: Simultaneous H2 production and CO2 capture

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cherd.2021.05.013Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Comparative techno-economic analysis of steam methane reforming with 3 different reactors was conducted.

  • Robust process simulation was performed for a thermodynamic analysis.

  • Uncertainty analysis using a Monte-Carlo simulation method was carried out.

  • Technical and economic insights for hydrogen production by steam methane reforming were provided.

Abstract

Hydrogen (H2) is currently receiving significant attention as a sustainable energy carrier. Steam methane reforming (SMR) accounts for approximately 50% of H2 production methods worldwide. However, SMR is concern because of the prodigious carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that have resulted in a global climate emergency. CO2 emissions remain, although some efforts have been made in a membrane reactor (MR) coupled with membranes to improve the H2 yield. A sorption-enhanced membrane reactor (SEMR) has been proposed as a next-generation process for simultaneous H2 production and CO2 capture. In this study, the thermodynamic and economic evaluation of SEMR were implemented using a process simulation, an itemized cost estimation, a sensitivity analysis (SA), and an uncertainty analysis (UA). The thermodynamic analysis results revealed that unit H2 production costs of 4.53, 1.98, and 3.04 $ kgH2−1 were obtained at 773 K for a conventional packed-bed reactor (PBR), a MR, and a SEMR, respectively. The SA results identified PSA as the most critical economic parameter for a unit H2 production cost for a PBR, whereas natural gas is determined to be the most influential parameter for a MR and a SEMR. The UA results from a Monte-Carlo simulation provided a broad range of unit H2 production costs, with 4.26–5.44 $ kgH2−1 for a PBR, 1.61–2.94 $ kgH2−1 for a MR, and 2.83–4.19 $ kgH2−1 for an SEMR. This indicates that using a SEMR for next-generation H2 production and CO2 capture is beneficial.

Introduction

The increase in greenhouse gas emissions such as CO2, NOx, and perfluorinated compounds that are released during the combustion of fossil fuels has led to serious environmental concerns, and a global climate emergency (Altamash et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019a; Cerrillo-Briones and Ricardez-Sandoval, 2019). Recently, the Korean government announced the Renewable Energy 3020 Plan and the Hydrogen Economy Activation Roadmap that outline an increase in renewable energy generation ratio of up to 20% and H2 production and application, respectively (Korean Government, 2019; Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy of Korea, 2017). H2 is regarded as an alternative energy resource to conventional fossil fuels because of its high energy density, and eco-friendly combustion (Bique and Zondervan, 2018; Liu et al., 2020). Currently, steam methane reforming (SMR) is a widely used process for the commercial production of H2, accounting for approximately 48% of global H2 production (Tran et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2019b). However, SMR in a conventional packed-bed reactor (PBR) has several serious drawbacks (Celik and Yildiz, 2017; Ma et al., 2017). Firstly, CO2 is produced as a byproduct of SMR, which is a major influential compound in global warming. Secondly, a high heat energy is required because of endothermic processes and finally, additional purification equipment is necessary to separate H2 from other byproducts.

To overcome these problems, a membrane reactor (MR), where an H2 separation membrane is inserted into a catalytic reactor, was introduced to enhance H2 production yield owing to the equilibrium shift driven by Le Chatelier’s principle (Medrano et al., 2018). In this process, an equilibrium shift occurs because H2 is continuously removed during the reaction through a H2 separation membrane (Kim et al., 2018a; Ountaksinkul et al., 2019). Furthermore, purified H2 can be obtained during the reaction without the use of an additional purification step. Ghasemzadeh et al. (2018) investigated the effects of technical parameters of transmembrane pressure from 0.5 to 1.5 bar, reaction temperature from 514 to 573 K, gas hourly space velocity from 3300 to 10,000 h−1, and steam/methanol ratio from one to three on the performance of methanol steam reforming in silica MR. They reported reaction temperature as the most influential parameter. Anzelmo et al. (2017a) conducted an experimental analysis of natural gas steam reforming in a Pd-based MR which had a 13 μm Pd layer under various operating conditions and ideal selectivity for H2/He and H2/Ar, with a reaction temperature of 673 K, a reaction pressure of 150 kPa to 300 kPa, and a sweep gas flow rate of 100 mL min−1. The authors reported a CH4 conversion of 84% and H2 recovery of 82% as the best performance under operating conditions of 673 K and 150 kPa. To determine the technical, economic and environmental feasibility, Heo et al. (2020) conducted a techno-economic analysis consisting of an itemized cost estimation, a sensitivity analysis (SA), and an uncertainty analysis (UA) using the Monte-Carlo simulation method, and a carbon footprint analysis for ethane steam reforming in a MR based on the results of a chemical process simulation using Aspen HYSYS®. These authors reported a significantly lower unit H2 production cost of 2.926 $ kgH2−1 for MR, and a CO2 emission reduction of 13.3% compared to a conventional reactor. Zhang et al. (2019a) investigated the performance of ammonia decomposition in a MR with a Ru catalyst impregnated in a Pd-coated porous yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) tube and suggested that 100% ammonia conversion could be obtained with a Cs promoter at temperature of less than 673 K. Zhang et al. (2019b) investigated the effect of CO2 in C2H6 to C2H4 conversion in a CO2 transport-based MR containing a Cr2O3-ZSM-5 catalyst inside and reported a C2H6 conversion of approximately 90%, C2H4 selectivity of approximately 60%, C2H4 selectivity of approximately 80%, and C2H4 flux density of 0.45 mL min−1. However, some problems, such as CO2 emissions and high energy requirements for SMR, remain, even though a membrane reactor is introduced. Another way to enhance H2 production yield is by employing a CO2 adsorbent in a reactor, namely, a sorption-enhanced reactor (SER). Schweitzer et al. (2018) conducted a process simulation and techno-economic analysis of a thermal capacity of 70 MW sorption enhanced biomass reforming process. They reported 32.8% and 43.7% of fuel to H2 efficiency and fuel to H2 and electricity efficiency, respectively. In addition, the capital cost of the reactor (gasifier) was identified as the most critical economic factor for the unit H2 production cost, and an increase in plant capacity could effectively reduce the unit H2 production cost. Alam et al. (2017a) performed a comparative process simulation of sorption-enhanced SMR coupled with chemical looping combustion and heat recovery steam generation. These authors confirmed that the newly introduced process was better than the conventional H2 production process in terms of 96% CH4 conversion and 95% CO2 capture efficiency. Dang et al. (2020) conducted an experiment on sorption-enhanced steam reforming of phenol obtained from biomass pyrolysis for high-purity H2 yield with a bifunctional catalyst, Ni-Ca-Al-O and demonstrated that 5Ni-CA2.8 was the optimized catalyst, with 98.88% H2 purity and approximately 100% phenol conversion. The best performance was observed when using the 5Ni-CA2.8 catalyst under 50 cycles of repeated processes, as well as no coke formation. Diglio et al. (2018a) conducted a 1-D numerical analysis of sorption-enhanced methane steam reforming, coupled with a network of reactors under isothermal conditions (973 K) and concluded that at least eight reactors in parallel were required for 92% purity of H2 production. Furthermore, the amount of H2 decreased from 2.9 molH2 molCH4−1 to 2.5 molH2 molCH4−1 when produced H2 was used to supply heat. A new concept of a sorption-enhanced membrane reactor (SEMR), which combines a membrane reactor with a CO2 adsorbent (Fig. 1) is proposed to address the shortcomings of a MR by employing of CO2 adsorbent (Ji et al., 2018). Ji et al. (2018) performed a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation of SEMR to investigate high efficiency H2 production via SMR, and demonstrated that SEMR can not only decrease the CO2 fraction, but can also increase the H2 production yield. Lee et al. (2020) developed a 1-D model of a PBR, a MR with co-current flow, an MR with counter-current flow, a SEMR with co-current flow, and a SEMR with counter-current flow, and conducted a comparative study for the five different reactor systems in terms of H2 production, CO2 emission, and CH4 conversion. Wu et al. (2015) constructed SEMR with nano-CaO as the CO2 sorbent and the NiO/Al2O3 as reforming catalyst for SMR and reported a CH4 conversion of 27.2% and H2 purity of 98.1% at 500 ℃, which are higher than those at 600 ℃.

Fig. 2 indicates the number of peer-reviewed published papers focusing on SMR within the last five years. They are classified into three specific topics (MR, SER, and SEMR) and five sub-topics (simulation, experiment, economic analysis, simulation + experiment, and simulation + economic analysis).

It has been demonstrated that SEMRs are rarely investigated compared to MRs and SERs. However, some published research exits on SEMR with water–gas shift reaction and glycerol steam reforming. Ghasemzadeh et al. (2017) developed a CFD model for a SEMR to examine H2 production during water-gas shift reaction. They confirmed that higher H2 production was observed in the case of a SEMR compared to a MR and a SER, with a positive effect of temperature increase in terms of H2 production. Silva et al. (2019) conducted a comparative experiment on glycerol steam reforming using a conventional reactor, a SER, and a SEMR. The authors demonstrated the advantage of combining both CO2 adsorbent and a MR by higher H2 production compared to the other reactor systems. In terms of the five sub-topics (Fig. 2), economic analyses are rarely reported. Subraveti et al. (2021) developed a techno-economic optimization model for a CO2 capture vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) process integrated with a SMR using three different adsorbents, namely, Zeolite 13X, UTSA-16, and ⅡSERP MOF2 and reported the lowest CO2 capture cost of 33.6 € tonCO2−1 for ⅡSERP MOF2. Roussanaly et al. (2020) conducted a techno-economic analysis of a H2 production system by modeling the SMR process. They reported H2 production costs of 12.2 and 18.1 € Nm−3 for without and with, CO2 capture, and a CO2 avoidance cost of 67 € tonCO2−1 for a H2 production capacity of 450 tonH2 day−1.

Rather than an overall process simulation, in previous work, a numerical study of 1-D modeling in terms of H2 production and CO2 emission for reactor design was conducted for five different reactors, namely, a PBR, a MR with co-current flow, a MR with counter-current flow, a SEMR with co-current flow, and a SEMR with counter-current flow. In the current study, a comparative thermodynamic and economic evaluation, considering the entire process system, was conducted for a PBR, a MR, and a SEMR to identify which technology is optimal in terms of technical, economic, and environmental aspects (Fig. 3). Furthermore, a comparative study was performed under the same operating conditions, such as temperature, pressure, and flow rate. Firstly, a thermodynamic analysis was conducted to identify which technology performs best in terms of H2 production yield among a PBR (conventional), a MR (membrane), a SEMR (membrane and CO2 adsorbent), and CO2 capture for zero CO2 emissions during H2 production based on lab-scale specification of reactor. Secondly, an economic evaluation was undertaken to provide a deeper economic understanding based on the economic results of itemized cost estimations and a SA. Finally, a Monte-Carlo simulation method conducted an uncertainty analysis to confirm how the change in natural gas cost and CO2 tax credit (future cost fluctuation) affected the unit H2 production cost.

Section snippets

Process simulation

Aspen Plus® is a commercial software widely used for the simulation of various chemical processes, such as fine chemistry, general chemistry, polymers, and electrolytes. In this study, it was utilized to conduct a thermodynamic analysis and obtain process flow diagrams for a PBR, a MR, and a SEMR. A theoretical study using a process simulation was conducted to investigate potential of a SEMR compared to a PBR and a MR. Reaction sets were composed of SMR (Eqs. (1) and (3)), water gas shift

Thermodynamic analysis from process simulation

Fig. 6 presents the process simulation results in terms of the H2 production rate for reaction temperatures ranging from 673 K to 973 K.

For all of the cases considered in this study, more H2 is produced when the reaction temperature increases because of its thermal properties such as the endothermic process, which requires heat for the reaction. Compared to a PBR, a higher H2 production rate is obtained for both a MR and a SEMR due to Le Chatelier’s principle and, a further increase in the H2

Conclusion

A techno-economic analysis for steam methane reforming (SMR) was conducted for a packed-bed reactor (PBR), a membrane reactor (MR), and a sorption-enhanced membrane reactor (SEMR), respectively. A process simulation was conducted using Aspen Plus® to create process flow diagrams of SMR for a PBR, a MR, and a SEMR and an economic analysis employing various economic analysis methods such as itemized cost estimation, a sensitivity analysis, and an uncertainty analysis was performed to evaluate the

Conflicts of interest statement

None.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) granted financial resource from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Republic of Korea (Nos. 20182020201260, 20203020040010).

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