Conversion of Methane to Syngas by a Membrane-Based Oxidation-Reforming Process

Article abstract of DOI:10.1002/anie.200351085

Two processes in one space: Methane, the main component of natural gas, can be converted into syngas efficiently in a two-stage oxygen-permeable ceramic membrane reactor by means of integrated oxidation and reforming processes (see picture). This could be

Full text of DOI:10.1002/anie.200351085

Communications
Syngas Production
Conversion of Methane to Syngas by a
Membrane-Based Oxidation–Reforming
Process**
Chu-sheng Chen,* Shao-jie Feng, Shen Ran,
De-chun Zhu, Wei Liu, and Henny J. M. Bouwmeester
Rational use of abundant natural gas is gaining importance as
petroleum oil reserves are diminishing. Methane, the main
component of natural gas, can be converted to liquid fuels,
hydrogen, and other value-added chemicals through a syngas
intermediate, a mixture of CO and H2. Currently, syngas is
produced by reacting methane with steam at high temper-
atures and pressures. This process is very energy- and capital-
intensive, as the reaction is highly endothermic. An alter-
native process to produce syngas is the partial oxidation of
methane (POM) with pure oxygen in the presence of a
catalyst.[1,2] The exothermic nature of POM makes the process
attractive in terms of energy consumption. The other
advantage of POM over the steam-reforming process is that
the H2/CO ratio of ~ 2 of the as-produced syngas is highly
suitable for subsequent conversion to environmentally
friendly liquid fuels through a Fischer–Tropsch process. The
main difficulty with POM lies in the consumption of large
quantities of expensive pure oxygen that is produced by the
cryogenic separation of air. A recent development in syngas
production technology is the use of oxygen-permeable dense
ceramic membranes[3,4] integrating the oxygen separation and
POM processes in a single space.[5] The formidable problem
for this approach is that the membrane must be chemically
and mechanically stable at elevated temperatures in a large
oxygen gradient with one side of the membrane exposed to
oxidizing atmosphere (air) and the other side to the reducing
atmosphere (the mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide).
Herein we propose a two-stage membrane reactor, as
depicted in Figure 1a, which may reduce the requirement
on the stability of the membrane materials. In this reactor,
part of the methane is converted into CO2 and H2O by
reaction with oxygen permeated through the membrane from
the air, and the resultant mixture is transferred to a catalyst
bed where the remaining methane is reformed to syngas.
Figure 1. Schematic diagrams of two-stage oxygen-permeable mem-
brane reactor for syngas production. a) The chemical conversions in
different areas of the membrane reactor; b) the construction and
dimensions of the reactor.
A
ceramic composite of Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3ꢀd
(97.5 mol%) and Co3O4 (2.5 mol%) was used to construct a
membrane reactor. The major phase of the composite was
intended for separating oxygen from air[6] and the minor
phase at the surface for catalyzing the reaction of methane
with permeated oxygen;[7] in terms of mechanics, small cobalt
oxide particles embedded in the bulk may also reinforce the
major phase. The dense tubular membrane of the required
phase composition was prepared by extrusion followed by
sintering at 11008C for 10 h. A g-Al2O3-supported catalyst
was prepared with a nickel loading of 12.5 wt% and sieved to
40 ~ 60 mesh.[8] The reactor consisted of a membrane of length
2.14 cm, inner diameter 0.76 cm (membrane surface area
5.10 cm2), and wall thickness 0.13 cm, and a catalyst bed
containing 0.2 g Ni/g-Al2O3; the membrane tube and the
catalyst bed were separated by a distance of 2.5 cm (see
Figure 1b). In order to improve the flowpattern in the
reactor, an alumina cylinder was placed inside the reactor
(not shown in Figure 1b for the sake of simplicity). The
reactor was sealed with glass rings at 9508C then cooled to
9008C and maintained at that temperature. Pure methane was
fed into the tubular reactor while air was simultaneously led
[*] Prof. C.-s. Chen, S.-j. Feng, Dr. S. Ran, D.-c. Zhu, Prof. W. Liu
Laboratory of Advanced Functional Materials and Devices
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
University of Science and Technology of China
Hefei, Anhui 230026 (P. R. China)
Fax: (+86)551-3601-592
E-mail: ccsm@ustc.edu.cn
Dr. H. J. M. Bouwmeester
Laboratory of Inorganic Materials Science
Faculty of Science & Technology and
MESA+ Research Institute
University of Twente
P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE, Enschede (The Netherlands)
[**] This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China [50225208].
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DOI: 10.1002/anie.200351085
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Angewandte
Chemie
over the shell side. The effluent was analyzed by on-line gas
chromatography (Varian 3400), in which H2, O2, N2, CH4, and
CO were separated by a 5-Š molecular sieve column and CO2
by GDX-502 column, and H2O was determined with a
hydrogen atomic balance.
The performance of the reactor is shown in Figure 2. It can
be seen that after a short activating period of about one hour,
both the methane conversion and CO selectivity exceed 95%.
establish the reaction pathways for syngas formation in the
two-stage reactor. At one side of the membrane, which is in
contact with air, oxygen molecules are incorporated as oxide
ions into the bulk of the membrane. At the other side of the
membrane, methane molecules adsorb and partly react with
the permeated oxide ions to yield CO2 and H2O, a reaction
catalyzed by the Co3O4 embedded in the membrane. The
mixture of unreacted methane, CO2, and H2O is then
transferred to the Ni/g-Al2O3 catalyst bed and converted
into syngas.
The membrane-based two-stage reactor has a number of
important features. The two-stage configuration poses less
stringent limitations on membrane materials than the reactor
in which the catalyst is located inside the membrane.[5] In the
former case, where the membrane is exposed to the mixture
of CO2, H2O, and CH4, the oxygen partial pressure pO is
2
calculated to be 10ꢀ13–10ꢀ14 bar based on the thermodynamic
data for the reaction CO + 1O2 , CO2.[10] In the real
2
situation, the oxygen partial pressure is higher and a small
amount of oxygen is present in the effluent, indicating that the
reaction does not attain the equilibrium state. In the latter
case, where the catalyst is within the membrane and the
&
*
Figure 2. Methane conversion (XCH
,
) and CO selectivity (SCO
,
),
4
~
membrane is in contact with H2 and CO, the pO is around
^
and methane feeding rate (FCH
,
) and O2 permeation rate (FO , ) in
2
4
4
10ꢀ19 bar.[11] The formation of coke on the catalyst in the two-
stage reactor is also much less severe than that in the single-
stage reactor in which the reforming catalyst is in intimate
contact with the membrane. In terms of the strategy of
developing and operating the membrane reactor, the two-
stage configuration allows us to distribute the overall risk
among the two separate components. Such a configuration is
also ideal in terms of energy consumption, for the heat
released by the deep oxidation of part of the methane at the
membrane stage of reactor is supplied to the catalyst bed
where endothermic reforming reactions take place. The as-
produced syngas is desirable for applications, because it
contains no nitrogen and has a lower H2/CO ratio than that
obtained by the regular steam reforming. The emission of
NOx is eliminated due to the use of an oxygen-permeable
membrane that is impervious to nitrogen. Although the
membrane-based two-stage reactor shows promise for appli-
cations, technical challenges remain in identification of
membrane materials with long-term mechanical and chemical
stabilities, development of reactor fabrication techniques, and
scale-up of the reactors to industrial modules.
a membrane reactor. Conditions: T=9008C; p=1 atm; membrane
surface area=5.1 cm2.
The CO selectivity does not change very much with variation
of the methane feeding rate. The throughput conversion of
methane decreases slightly with increasing methane feeding
rate. When methane was fed at a rate of ~ 38 cm3 minꢀ1, the
reactor attained a desirable state: syngas production rate
~ 20 cm3 cmꢀ2 membrane surfaceminꢀ1, equivalent O2 per-
meation flux ~ 4.6 cm3 cmꢀ2 min, H2/CO ~ 1.8, CO selectivity
~ 98%, methane throughput conversion ~ 97%. After the
reactor had been operated at 9008C for ~ 400 h, the experi-
ment was voluntarily terminated, and the membrane
remained almost intact.
In order to establish the reaction pathways we performed
experiments with blank tubular reactors in which the Ni/g-
Al2O3 catalyst was either simply left out or replaced with
g-Al2O3 powder. For the former configuration comprising
a tubular membrane with an inner surface area of 4.32 cm2,
when methane was fed into the reactor at a rate of
19.4 cm3 minꢀ1 at 9008C, the effluent was found to contain a
large quantity of CO2 (15.3%), H2O (35.1%), and unreacted
CH4 (52.9%) as well as small amounts of CO (1.2%), H2
(1.8%),C2H4 (1.8%), C2H6 (0.4%), O2 (0.03%), and N2
(0.2%). For the latter configuration comprising a tubular
membrane with a surface area of 4.58 cm2, the dominant
components in the effluent remained to be CO2 (14.6%), H2O
(34.0%), and CH4 (45.3%). Similar results were reported by
Balachandran et al. who found that in an SrFeCo0.5Ox tubular
membrane reactor (membrane surface area 8 cm2) in the
absence of a reforming catalyst, the permeated oxygen
reacted with methane, yielding CO2 and H2O.[5] The presence
of CO2, H2O, CH4, and O2 were also reported by Tsai et al. in
the effluent of an La0.2Ba0.8Fe0.8Co0.2O3ꢀd disk-shaped mem-
brane reactor (membrane surface area 0.28 cm2) without a
catalyst.[9] All these observations combined allowus to
Received: February 3, 2003
Revised: July 25, 2003 [Z51085]
Keywords: ceramics · membranes · methane · oxygen · syngas
.
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