Performance Assessment of Water Gas Shift Membrane Reactors by a Two-dimensional Model

There is currently a large world effort towards developing hydrogen power as the next generation of clean energy for both the transportation and the electricity sectors. Water gas shift (WGS) is a thermodynamically limited reaction which has to operate at low temperatures, reducing kinetics rate and increasing the amount of catalyst required to reach valuable CO conversions.It has been widely demonstrated that the integration of hydrogen selective membranes is a promising way to enhance WGS reactors performance: a Pd-based membrane reactor (MR) operated successfully overcoming the thermodynamic constraints of a traditional reactor (TR) thanks to the removal of hydrogen from reaction environment. In this work, the effect of hydrogen removal in membrane water gas shift reactors will be investigated by a two-dimensional, non-isothermal model in order to analyze the WGS reactor performance. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.