Abbas Aghaeinejad-Meybodi - Chemical Engineering Department, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran
Milad Ghahremani - Chemical Engineering Faculty, Urmia University of Technology, Urmia, Iran
Kamran Ghasemzadeh - Chemical Engineering Faculty, Urmia University of Technology, Urmia, Iran

A two-dimensional isothermal mathematical computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model has been developed for the ethane dehydrogenation reaction in a fixed-bed catalytic membrane reactor. Since ethane dehydrogenation is an equilibrium reaction, removal of produced hydrogen by the membrane shifts the thermodynamic equilibrium to ethylene production. In this study, the catalytic dehydrogenation of ethane to hydrogen and ethylene was investigated in a tubular Pd-based membrane reactor (MR) in presence of a palladium catalyst. The proposed CFD model provides the local information of velocity, pressure and component concentration for the driving force analysis. The validation of CFD model results was carried out by other experimental data and a good agreement between CFD model results and experimental data was achieved. After model validation, the effects of the important operating parameter (reaction temperature and reaction pressure) on the performances of Pd-based MR were studied in terms of ethane conversion and COx-free hydrogen recovery. It was found that the efficient removal of hydrogen in the Pd-based MR could significantly increase the ethane conversion. It can be concluded that the ethane conversion realized in Pd-based MR is higher than traditional reactor (TR) during ethane dehydrogenation reaction, in all the studied cases (49% enhancement in ethane conversion at 850K).

CFD, Membrane reactor, Ethane dehydrogenation, Hydrogen production