Enhancement of Methanol Synthesis in a Water Vapor-perm Selective Membrane Reactor

In this work a membrane reactor is proposed for water vapor removal from reaction zone in the methanol production process toovercome thermodynamic equilibrium limitations of the methanol synthesis reactions. A steady state heterogeneous one-dimensionalmathematical model is developed for simulation of the proposed catalytic fixed bed membrane reactor. To verify the accuracy of theconsidered model and assumptions, simulation results of the conventional reactor is compared with the available industrial plant data.The membrane reactor benefits are the higher methanol production rate, higher quality of outlet product and consequently lower costin the product purification stage. This configuration has enhanced the methanol yield about 5.7% than industrial reactor. Experimentalproof-of-concept is needed to establish the safe operation of the proposed configuration.