Study on the performance of membrane reactor using steam methane reforming for hydrogen production heated by HTGR

Using High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) for hydrogen production through steam methane reforming (SMR) offers advantages such as high hydrogen yield, methane savings, relatively low cost, and ease of scale-up. However, due to the limitation of the temperature of the heating helium gas, the methane conversion ratio of SMR using HTGR is much lower than that of traditional SMR. The membrane reactor (MR), with its high conversion efficiency, compact structure, and low cost, is a suitable way to improve the methane conversion ratio. This study establishes a one-dimensional reaction flow model for MR heated by the helium gas from HTGR. And the model is validated and applied to analyze the performance of MR. The results show that, compared to the original reformer tube, MR demonstrates superior performance, especially at higher methane conversion ratio and hydrogen yield. And the significant impact of sweep gas and membrane thickness on the performance of MR is discussed in detail. This work offers a new insight into highly enhancing the efficiency of SMR for hydrogen production using HTGR.