Comparative study of conventional steam methane reforming and auto thermal reforming with hybrid sorption enhanced and environmentally benign process models for hydrogen production

Nearly all the hydrogen the world makes comes from natural gas by steam methane reforming, and the process gives off a great deal of carbon dioxide. There is a cleverer version: put a solid sorbent in the reactor that grabs the carbon dioxide as it forms. Removing a product pushes the reaction forward, so you get more hydrogen and cleaner hydrogen at the same time. The carbon dioxide comes out concentrated and ready to store.

We built one-dimensional reactor models for four routes: conventional steam reforming, autothermal reforming, and the sorption-enhanced version of each. We simulated them across 773 to 1,473 kelvin and 5 to 40 bar and checked the models against published data. At the operating point we selected, 923 kelvin and 30 bar, the sorption-enhanced routes converted 66 and 76 percent of the methane against 32 and 51 percent for the conventional routes. They produced 87 and 92 percent pure hydrogen against 55 percent.

This was my first peer-reviewed paper, done during the chemical engineering degree in Lahore. I learned to build a whole-process model, validate it against real data and compare alternatives on the numbers.