Issue 9, 2023

A novel technological blue hydrogen production process: industrial sorption enhanced autothermal membrane (ISEAM)

Abstract

A novel technological industrial blue hydrogen production process – the Industrial Sorption Enhanced Autothermal Membrane (ISEAM) process, with the potential to produce constant fuel cell grade hydrogen with a purity of 99.99%, regardless of upstream process upsets, has been modelled using an Aspen Plus simulator and MATLAB (including both thermodynamics and kinetics analysis). The process exhibits a very high hydrogen yield (99%), and methane conversion (99.9%), with a low carbon monoxide footprint (at ppm levels). The results were validated by comparing against experimental data published in the literature. Parametric evaluations were later conducted to identify the optimal operating conditions for the developed blue hydrogen ISEAM process. The required reforming heat is provided by the exothermic carbonation reaction of a sorbent, while chemical looping of the oxygen carrier (metal oxides) provides the regeneration heat required for the saturated sorbent, in a novel multi-tubular packed shell and tube reactor. Pinch analysis shows that the process is auto thermal (so it does not need any external heating utility) and can achieve an extremely high 97.5% thermal and hydrogen production efficiency. The ISEAM process was benchmarked against an industrial steam methane reforming (SMR) plant and the result shows ≥32% improvements in most of the technical parameters that were evaluated. Economic evaluation shows a levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) of $2.6 per kg-H2 for the baseline SMR plant compared with $1.3 per kg-H2 for the ISEAM process (a 50% cost reduction). The cost of CO2 removal (CCR) was calculated as $180 per tonneCO2 for the baseline SMR process compared with $33.2 per tonneCO2 (81.6% cost reduction) for the novel process. The novel ISEAM process utilizes mature and existing industry technologies such as desulphurization, pre-reforming, adsorption, membranes, waste heat boilers, and pressure swing adsorption. Because of this, scale-up is easier and some of the challenges associated with the SMR process and integrated sorption enhanced membrane reforming (SEMR) processes are addressed. These include thermodynamic constraints, a high energy penalty, overall process integration, optimization, membrane contamination, carbon deposition and unsteady state operation.

Graphical abstract: A novel technological blue hydrogen production process: industrial sorption enhanced autothermal membrane (ISEAM)

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
23 Feb 2023
Accepted
21 Jul 2023
First published
17 Aug 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Energy Adv., 2023,2, 1476-1494

A novel technological blue hydrogen production process: industrial sorption enhanced autothermal membrane (ISEAM)

C. Eluwah, P. S. Fennell, C. J. Tighe and A. A. Dawood, Energy Adv., 2023, 2, 1476 DOI: 10.1039/D3YA00090G

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements