Aims and Objective:
In this work, the performance of sodalite membrane reactor (MR) in methanol to olefins (MTO) process was evaluated for ethylene and propylene production with in situ steam removal using 3-dimensional CFD (computational fluid dynamic) technique.
Methods:
The local information of component concentration for methanol, ethylene, propylene, and water was obtained by the proposed CFD model. Literature data were applied to validate model results, and between experimental data and predicted results using CFD model, a good agreement was attained. In the sodalite MR model, a commercial SAPO-34 catalyst in the reaction zone was selected. The influence of key operation parameters including pressure and temperature on methanol con-version, water recovery, and yields of ethylene, propylene, and water was studied to evaluate the performance of sodalite MR. Permeation flux through the sodalite membrane was increased by an increase of reaction temperature which led to enhance-ment of water stream recovered in the permeate side.
Result and Conclusion:
The CFD modeling results showed that the sodalite MR in MTO process has higher performance regarding methanol conversion compared to the fixed-bed reactor (methanol conversion of 97% and 89% at 733 K for sodalite MR and fixed-bed reactor, respectively).
