Current Developments in Catalytic Methanation of Carbon Dioxide—A Review

The utilization of fossil fuel has increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations drastically over the last few decades. This leads to global warming and climate change, increasing the occurrence of more severe weather around the world. One promising solution to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions is methanation. Many researchers and industries are interested in CO2 methanation as a power-to-gas technology and carbon capture and storage (CCS) system. Producing an energy carrier, methane (CH4), via CO2 methanation and water electrolysis is an exceptionally effective method of capturing energy generated by renewables. To enhance methanation efficiency, numerous researches have been conducted to develop catalysts with high activity, CH4 selectivity, and stability against the reaction heat. Therefore, in this mini-review, the characteristics and recent advances of metal-based catalysts in methanation of CO2 is discussed.

Bio-inspired Chemical Space Exploration of Terpenoids

Many computational methods are used to expand the open-ended border of chemical spaces. Natural products and their derivatives are an important source for drug discovery, and some algorithms are devoted to rapidly generating pseudo-natural products, while their accessibility and chemical interpretation were often ignored or underestimated, thus hampering experimental synthesis in practice. Herein, a bio-inspired strategy (named TeroGen) is proposed, in which the cyclization and decoration stage of terpenoid biosynthesis were mimicked by meta-dynamics simulations and deep learning models respectively, to explore their chemical space. In the protocol of TeroGen, the synthetic accessibility is validated by reaction energetics (reaction barrier and reaction heat) based on the GFN2-xTB methods. Chemical interpretation is an intrinsic feature as the reaction pathway is bioinspired and triggered by the RMSD-PP method in conjunction with an encoder-decoder architecture. This is quite distinct from conventional library/fragment-based or rule-based strategies, by using TeroGen, new reaction routes are feasibly explored to increase the structural diversity. For example, only a rather limited number of sesterterpenoids in our training set is included in this work, but our TeroGen would predict more than 30000 sesterterpenoids and map out the reaction network with super efficiency, ten times as many as the known sesterterpenoids (less than 2500). In sum, TeroGen not only greatly expands the chemical space of terpenoids but also provides various plausible biosynthetic pathways, which are crucial clues for heterologous biosynthesis, bio-mimic and chemical synthesis of complicated terpenoids.

Three-Dimensional Computation Fluid Dynamics Simulation of CO Methanation Reactor with Immersed Tubes

CO methanation is an exothermic process, and heat removal is an essential issue for the methanation reactor. Numerical studies were carried out to investigate the performance of a 3D fluidized bed methanation reactor with immersed cooling tubes. The simulations were carried out in the frame of the Euler–Euler model to analyze the performance of the reactor. The influences of operating temperatures were studied to understand the reaction characteristics. The temperature increases rapidly neared the inlet due to the reactions. The immersed tubes were effective at removing the reaction heat. The chemical equilibrium state was achieved with an operating temperature of 682 K for the case with immersed tubes. Different control mechanisms can be found during the process of increasing and decreasing the temperature. The reaction kinetic is the dominate factor for the cases with lower temperatures, while the chemical equilibrium will play a more important role at high temperature conditions. The configuration with staggered tubes is beneficial for heat removal.

Effect of Heat of Reaction and Charring Properties on Heat Release Rate during Combustion

The heat release rate (HRR) of fires can be determined from the relationship between the thermal pyrolysis rate of combustibles and the effective heat of combustion. To accurately determine the thermal pyrolysis rate of combustibles, it is important to understand the heat of reaction of combustibles. However, this parameter is difficult to measure for combustibles, such as wood, that produce charring during combustion because they undergo a multi-step pyrolysis reaction. In this study, the ISO 5660-1 standard method was used to perform cone calorimetry experiments to understand how the HRR is affected by the heat of reaction heat and charring properties of combustibles. To this end, the HRR calculated using FDS computational analysis was compared to the measured value from the ISO 5660-1 cone calorimetry experiments. A dehydrated Douglas-fir, an evergreen tree of the pine family, was used as a combustible material. The cone calorimetry experiment and FDS computational analysis results confirmed that increases in the heat of reaction and charring properties were directly correlated with the decrease in the HRR.

Numerical Modeling and Evaluation of PEM Used for Fuel Cell Vehicles

The present study sought to analyze a novel type of polymer membrane fuel cell to be used in vehicles. The performance of the fuel cell was evaluated by modeling the types of production–consumption heat in the anode and cathode (including half-reaction heat, activation heat, and absorption/desorption heat) and waterflood conditions. The meshing of flow channels was carried out by square cells and the governing equations were numerically discretized in the steady mode using the finite difference method followed by solving in MATLAB software. Based on the simulation results, the anodic absorption/desorption heat, anodic half-reaction heat, and cathodic activation heat are positive while the cathodic absorption/desorption heat and cathodic half-reaction heat show negative values. All heat values exhibit a decremental trend over the flow channel. Considering the effect of relative humidity, the relative humidity of the cathode showed no significant change while the anode relative humidity decreased along the flow channel. The velocity at the membrane layer was considerably lower, due to the smaller permeability coefficient of this layer compared to the gas diffusion and reactants (cathode) layers.

Prospects for reducing energy consumption in zinc oxide technology

The heat-technological scheme for the production of zinc oxide from metallic zinc is considered. It is shown that the thermal efficiency factor of the existing industrial process is very low and is equal to 5%. The technological process thermodynamics analysis showed that the zinc vapor combustion exothermic reaction heat is sufficient to provide heat for all endothermic technology stages. The conditions and design of the installation, which make it possible to use this heat for all stages of the technological process, are considered. This provides an increase efficiency factor up to 44%.

THERMAL CONTROL OF MECHANOCHEMICAL REACTION

Mechanochemistry studies and explains the processes of chemical and physicochemical transformations that are generated by mechanical action on a substance. When carrying out deep mechanochemical transformations, as a rule, it is necessary to transfer to solid reagents a portion of energy comparable to the energy of interatomic bonds. For this, various machines and apparatus are used, such as extruders, in which mechanical energy is constantly transferred to the crushed material. The article discusses the interaction of two reagents in a simple chemical reaction in the state of a mixture of particles of two types, which occurs during compression of particles having a rough irregular shape, and colliding with each other, forming areas of contact. Significant stress concentrations and heating of the substance with the formation of a new phase arise in these regions. Thermal control of the mechanochemical reaction is to maintain an optimal balance of dissipative heat and heat from the coolant in the worm reactor so that the rate of flow and the final product of the reaction meet the specified specifications. The formulas provided in the article for calculating the coefficient of the rate of mechanochemical reaction, heat transfer between worm reactor and jacket channel, heat exchange between jacket and environment allows to calculate the balance conditions for thermal management. The block diagram of the technological line, which is presented in the article, is more economical in comparison with carrying out the same reaction in a solvent. The economic benefit lies in the elimination of the steps of introducing and removing the solvent from the reaction product. At the end, it is indicated that the mechanochemical reaction of the transformation of a mixture of two dispersed materials consisting of solid particles into a liquid can be realized in continuous conditions in a flow mode in a worm machine. And thermal control of the course of a mechanochemical reaction can be carried out using controlled heat exchange with a coolant in a jacket under conditions of turn-around spatial dispersion.

3D Unsteady Simulation of a Scale-Up Methanation Reactor with Interconnected Cooling Unit

The production of synthetic natural gas (SNG) via methanation has been demonstrated by experiments in bench scale bubbling fluidized bed reactors. In the current work, we focus on the scale-up of the methanation reactor, and a circulating fluidized bed (CFB) is designed with variable diameter according to the characteristic of methanation. The critical issue is the removal of reaction heat during the strongly exothermic process of the methanation. As a result, an interconnected bubbling fluidized bed (BFB) is utilized and connected with the reactor in order to cool the particles and to maintain system temperature. A 3D model is built, and the influences of operating temperature on H2, CO conversion and CH4 yield are evaluated by numerical simulations. The instantaneous and time-averaged flow behaviors are obtained and analyzed. It turns out that the products with high concentrations of CH4 are received at the CFB reactor outlet. The temperature of the system is kept under control by using a cooling unit, and the steady state of thermal behavior is achieved under the cooling effect of BFB reactor. The circulating rate of particles and the cooling power of the BFB reactor significantly affect the performance of reactor. This investigation provides insight into the design and operation of a scale-up methanation reactor, and the feasibility of the CFB reactor for the methanation process is confirmed.

Study on Waste Heat-Driven Refrigeration System for Energy Saving and Fast Cooling of Dust Collector in Monocrystalline Silicon Manufacture

Single-crystal silicon is key raw material in photovoltaic industry. In its manufacture, silicon monoxide dust, a byproduct, is collected under vacuum environment. To clean the dust collector, air is recharged into the collector, reacting with the dust and causing very high temperature. Collector components may be damaged. It also takes several hours to cool down. In this paper, a cooling system based on ejection refrigeration cycle is proposed, which collects the reaction heat and simultaneously controls the collector temperature around 100°C. Then, it is driven by stored waste reaction heat and cools down the dust to a lower temperature. The designed cooling system, employing a 9.7972 m2 fin-tube heat exchanger, can simultaneously meet the cooling load of four dust collectors with 330L/S capacity. By a thermodynamic model established in this work, performance analysis is carried out. Generating temperature around 73°C and evaporating temperature around 6°C are recommended for system operation. Results also show the cooling system is able to provide 3270 kJ cooling energy that is needed by the collector, for fast cooling down the dust no longer than 620 s. It is about 92% shorter than the time of current collector, indicating the cooling system is effective and feasible.