Análise termodinâmica de processos de reforma do metano e da síntese Fischer-Tropsch / Thermodynamic analysis of methane reforming processes and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis

AUTOR(ES)
FONTE

IBICT - Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

30/03/2012

RESUMO

The reactions of reforming of light hydrocarbons, especially natural gas, are chemical reactions of great importance and represent key steps for large scale production of hydrogen for use in hydrogenation reactions or fuel cells, or synthesis gas production, for application in the ammonia or methanol production, or to Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis. The Fischer- Tropsch synthesis is the main process of converting light hydrocarbons such as methane, in hydrocarbons of higher value added. The determination of the thermodynamically favorable conditions for the operation for this type of process is required. Within this context, the reactions of steam reforming, oxidative reforming, autothermal reforming, dry reforming, dry autothermal reforming and dry reforming combined with steam reforming were thermodynamically evaluated to determine the best reaction conditions for the production of synthesis gas and hydrogen. For this, we used the methods of Gibbs energy minimization, at constant pressure and temperature, and the Entropy maximization, at constant pressure and enthalpy. Both cases were formulated as optimization problems in the form of non-linear programming and solved with the software GAMS 2.5® with the solver CONOPT2. The results obtained by the method of minimization of Gibbs energy, for all the reform processes evaluated, proved able to produce hydrogen and syngas. Since the reaction of steam reforming showed greater ability to hydrogen production, due to high H2/CO molar ratio obtained in the product. The partial oxidation reaction showed good results for the syngas production, due to H2/CO molar ratio close to 2 in the product. The comparison with experimental data has shown that the Gibbs energy minimization method showed good predictive ability. By comparison with simulated data from the literature we can see that the methodology of minimization of Gibbs energy, used in this work is in agreement with data obtained in the literature for the same methodology. The results obtained using the methodology of entropy maximization allowed us to verify that the reactions of partial oxidation, autothermal reforming and dry autothermal reforming had autothermal behavior, both for the use of O2 as for the use of air as oxidizing agent. The air has shown ability to reduce the final temperature rise of the system, and its use has proved interesting to avoid hot spots in the reactor. A comparison with data from the reactor´s thermal profile, for the reactions of partial oxidation and autothermal reforming, only found in the literature, showed good predictive ability of the methodology of entropy maximization to determine the final temperature of the reaction. The analysis realized using the methodology of Gibbs energy minimization for the synthesis reactions of methanol, ethanol and linear hydrocarbons, demonstrated the feasibility of producing these compounds. All synthesis reactions evaluated were greatly dependent on the influence of the catalyst (kinetic effect) to promote the production of products of interest. Trough the entropy maximization method was determined that all synthesis reactions analyzed presents exothermic behavior, but in the reaction conditions evaluated here, these systems can be considered safe. The methodologies used and applied in the software GAMS ® 23.1, and solved with the solver CONOPT2 proved to be fast and effective for solving the proposed problems with low computational time in all cases analyzed.

ASSUNTO(S)

metano fischer-tropsch processo de programação não-linear gibbs energia livre de entropia methane fischer-tropsch processes non-linear program gibbs free energy entropy

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