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.

Structural effect of Ni/TiO2 on CO methanation: improved activity and enhanced stability

Highly dispersed Ni/TiO2 catalyst with Ni (111) obtained by cold plasma decomposition shows improved activity and carbon resistance for CO methanation.

Kinetic Study on CO-Selective Methanation over Nickel-Based Catalysts for Deep Removal of CO from Hydrogen-Rich Reformate

The CO-selective methanation process is considered as a promising CO removal process for compact fuel processors producing hydrogen, since the process selectively converts the trace of CO in the hydrogen-rich gas into methane without additional reactants. Two different types of efficient nickel-based catalysts, showing high activity and selectivity to the CO methanation reaction, were developed in our previous works; therefore, the kinetic models of the reactions over these nickel-based catalysts have been investigated adopting the mechanistic kinetic models based on the Langmuir chemisorption theory. In the methanation process, the product species can react with the reactant and also affect the adsorption/desorption of the molecules at the active sites. Thus, the kinetic parameter study should be carried out by global optimization handling all the rate equations for the plausible reactions at once. To estimate the kinetic parameters, an effective optimization algorithm combining both heuristic and deterministic methods is used due to the large solution space and the nonlinearity of the objective function. As a result, 14 kinetic parameters for each catalyst have been determined and the parameter sets for the catalysts have been compared to understand the catalytic characteristics.