(420a) Design and Control of An Experimental Membrane Enhanced Steam Reformer

In this work, a systematic procedure to design a membrane Enhanced steam reformer (MSR) is proposed. Mass and energy balance equations are used to model the membrane enhanced steam reformer. The dimensionless parameters that are used as design variables (i. e., Damkohler number (Da), permeation number (£c), reaction and permeate side pressure ratio (y) and pre-reformer over membrane steam reformer length ratio (w)) can be derived from material balance equations. These deign parameters were optimized to maximize the conversion of methane. The optimal point of the design variables was found to be (Da=0.1, £c=70,w?æ=0.2); this was used to calculate the size of the MSR, the catalyst weight, and the methane flowrate. A MSR corresponding the optimal design was built and tested in the ITRI EEL laboratory, and the experimental data closely match the simulation results. The best methane and hydrogen production rate are 59% and 6L/hr, respectively. From steady-state sensitivity analysis of the MSR, reactor pressure and inlet flowrate of methane dominate the hydrogen production rate. Finally, two control structures, on-demand structure and on-supply structure are designed and the performance of these two control structures is evaluated for load disturbance rejection. The results indicate that the on-demand control structure gives a rapid transition to different power demands.