(455a) A Low-Temperature Hollow Fiber Membrane Reactor for Intensified Propane Dehydrogenation

Propylene is a crucial petrochemical feedstock for a number of bulk chemicals and polymers. While steam cracking remains to dominate propylene production, propane dehydrogenation (PDH) has been increasingly practiced to address the gap between propylene demand and production. The propane conversion of PDH reactions is challenged by thermodynamic limitation and reaction endothermicity. High reaction temperatures (above 550 °C) are required to obtain attractive propane conversion, which leads to rapid catalyst deactivation. Membrane reactors can potentially address this challenge by integrating reaction and separation to reduce the capital cost, energy consumption, and footprint of propane dehydrogenation.

In this talk, we will present a novel hollow fiber membrane reactor for intensified propane dehydrogenation and product separation. The membrane reactor consists of novel hollow fine fiber membranes (diameter ~ 0.3mm) for in situ hydrogen removal and platinum-based catalysts for propane activation. The hollow fine fiber membranes have high membrane packing density, which allows small membrane reactor footprint and modular propylene production. The hollow fiber membranes efficiently removed the hydrogen product from the membrane reactor and enhanced the propane conversion by 200% over the equilibrium conversion. This gave commercially attractive propane conversion (above 30%) and high propylene selectivity (above 98%) at 450 °C, which is at least 100 °C lower than commercial PDH processes. The low reaction temperature suppressed catalyst deactivation, thereby allowing the intensified membrane reactor to provide unprecedentedly stable conversion and selectivity to outperform many PDH membrane reactors reported in literature.