Spring 2018 – Process Intensification via Sorption-Enhanced Membrane Reactors

“Process Intensification (PI) has emerged as an efficient strategy for developing sustainable and economically-profitable chemical processes by significantly reducing capital and operating costs incurred, wastes generated, utilities consumed and raw materials required. PI predominantly focuses on developing novel processes and intensified hardware by integrating multiple synergistic phenomena to produce desired chemical products. The sorption-enhanced membrane reactor (SEMR) is one such application of PI where both reaction and separation occur simultaneously in a single reactor column. Fundamentally, SEMR is based on the widely-famous Le Chatelier’s principle which states that removing the reaction product(s) from a gas mixture pushes the reaction equilibrium in forward direction. SEMR integrates three different phenomena in a single column – (i) reaction promoted by respective catalyst, (ii) sorption promoted by a suitable sorbent, and (iii) permeation facilitated by membrane. Therefore, the SEMR column consists of solid sorbent and catalyst mixture, and a polymeric membrane. Due to the reaction product(s) removal by both sorbent and membrane, the equilibrium shifts in the forward direction, thereby producing the reaction product(s) with higher purity and productivity. As of now, we have already developed a generalized reaction-adsorption modeling and simulation (GRAMS) framework for simulating hybrid reaction-sorption systems. The objective of this project would be to extend the framework to include the physics introduced to the system by the addition of membrane separation. Initially, the project would require the students to obtain modeling equations for describing the SEMR systems. The students would then extend the GRAMS framework to introduce the membrane physics for simulating SEMR column using MATLAB. If time permits, in-house black-box optimization algorithms would then be used for optimizing the SEMR systems. “