Evaluation of silica membrane performance in various designs for hydrogen separation

Hydrogen as a high-quality and clean energy carrier has attracted renewed and ever-increasing attention around the world in recent years, mainly due to developments in fuel cells and environmental pressures including climate change issues. The major purpose of present study, is investigation of the Silica membrane performance for various configurations, namely; single stage, single-stage with retentate recycle and countercurrent recycle cascade (CRC), during separation of hydrogen from reforming products. To this aim, a black-box model was developed using PROII software version 10 and its validation was carried out by comparing the simulation results with experimental data. After simulation validation, for hydrogen separation, various configurations of silica membrane process (single stage, Single-stage with retentate recycle configuration and countercurrent recycle cascade (CRC) multistage) were compared and the best results were achieved for CRC configuration.

Evaluation of silica membrane performance in various designs for hydrogen separation Keywords:

Hydrogen separation , Membrane process , Silica membrane , Reforming , PROII 10.0