Dynamic modeling of a H2O-permselective membrane reactor to enhance methanol synthesis from syngas considering catalyst deactivation

In this paper, the effect of water vapor removal on methanol synthesis capacity from syngas in a fixed-bed membrane reactor is studied considering long-term catalyst deactivation. A dynamic heterogeneous one-dimensional mathematical model that is composed of two sides is developed to predict the performance of this configuration. In this configuration, conventional methanol reactor is supported by an alumina-silica composite membrane layer for water vapor removal from reaction zone. To verify the accuracy of the considered model and assumptions, simulation results of the conventional methanol reactor is compared with the industrial plant data under the same process condition. The membrane reactor improves catalyst life time and enhances CO₂ conversion to methanol by overcoming the limitation imposed by thermodynamic equilibrium. This configuration has enhanced the methanol production capacity about 4.06% compared with the industrial methanol reactor during the production time.