Abstract
Experiments and simulations have been carried out to study the possibility of a new proposed method (MPMR) for improving the performance of a conventional porous membrane reactor system (CPMR), by which the sweep side is filled the same dehydrogenation catalyst as used in the feed side. By experiment and simulation, it is proved that MPMR can improve CPMR not only with pure feed but also with diluted feed. The reason for the improvement is because the sweep side can effectively convert reactant that permeates through the membrane. However, Vycor glass-based MPMR cannot exceed the performance of GFBR, which is a fixed bed reactor where all inert gas dilutes the reaction system. Simulation results show that partial pressures of products in the sweep side of the MPMR are much smaller than those in the feed side. Therefore permeation of reactive species from the feed side to the sweep side still occurs as observed for CPMR.
