High-purity hydrogen production via sorption-enhanced steam methane reforming reaction: Experimental approach with multi-section packing concept

Hydrogen is highlighted due to its possibility as a new clean energy carrier and steam methane reforming (SMR) reaction has been applied for mass production of hydrogen. Since the produced hydrogen from reaction contains large amounts of impurity components such as unreacted reactants and byproducts, additional purification steps are needed to produce high-purity hydrogen. By applying sorption-enhanced reaction (SER) concept where reaction and byproduct CO₂ removal are carried out simultaneously in a single reactor, the SMR reaction processes can be simplified, high-purity hydrogen can be produced directly, and also thermodynamic limitation of the conventional SMR reaction can be circumvented. In order to further improve SER performance, a multi-section packing concept was recently proposed. In this study, the multi-section packing concept was experimentally demonstrated in sorption-enhanced SMR (SE-SMR) reaction. The experimental results showed that SE-SMR reaction was significantly affected by reaction temperature due to conflicting dependence of reaction rate and CO₂ sorption uptake on temperature. In addition, it was confirmed that more high-purity hydrogen could be produced by applying multi-section packing concept to SE-SMR reaction operated at sufficiently-high temperature where SMR reaction was not limited by rate.