Hydrogen production in an environmental-friendly process by application of chemical looping combustion via Ni- and Fe-Based oxygen carriers

In this research, application of chemical looping combustion (CLC) instead of furnace in a conventional steam reformer (CSR) assisted by Pd/Ag membranes for hydrogen production has been analyzed. Ni- and Fe-based oxygen carriers have been employed in CLC for carbon dioxide capture. A steady state one dimensional heterogeneous catalytic reaction model is applied to analyze the performance and applicability of proposed CLC-SRM configuration via different oxygen carriers. Simulation results show that for all types of used oxygen carriers combustion efficiency reaches to 1 in the fuel reactor (FR) part of CLC-SRM. In CLC-SRM, methane conversion increases from 26% in CSR to 33.7% and 30.87 with employing Ni- and Fe- based oxygen carriers respectively. In addition, hydrogen production increases from 3380 kmol h –1 in CSR to 4258 and 3948 kmol h –1 in CLC-SRM with employing Ni- and Fe-based oxygen carriers respectively. Increasing FR feed temperature in CLC-SRM via all types of oxygen carriers shows enhancement of methane conversion and hydrogen production in the SR side. By increasing FR feed temperature from 800–1000 K, hydrogen production can increases 41.36 and 33.08% by using Ni- and Fe- based oxygen carriers in comparison with CSR respectively.