Process Intensification - Opportunities and Challenges for Reaction Engineering

Process Intensification (PI) promises new pathways to reducing industry’s impact on the environment by improving process mass and energy efficiencies (thereby reducing waste and conserving energy) as well as reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in many cases. In this talk, I will review recent chemical reaction engineering (CRE) innovations for PI and review our research over the past decade in developing new PI strategies and technologies in the area of chemical reactor design for natural gas processing.

PI strategies based upon the coupling of separations and catalytic reaction enable breakthroughs in reaction yields via overcoming thermodynamic limitations; when applied to hydrogen production from natural gas, catalytic membrane and sorption-enhanced reformer processes (SERP) additionally provide simultaneous CO2 removal for subsequent sequestration. This talk will highlight our work in identifying optimal catalyst configurations for achieving significant breakthroughs in membrane reactor performance and the extension of these design rules to SERP catalyst designs.

PI strategies based upon the integration of multiple unit operations within a single, compact device enables the creation of “smart” chemical processes and mobile natural gas processing stations based upon interchangeable process components. Microreactors have been widely accepted as an enabling technology for achieving this goal; however there remains several barriers to their acceptance in industry. This talk will emphasize recent efforts to reduce device cost via new manufacturing approaches, and the importance of steady-state robustness and dynamic stability of microreactors when applied to arguably their most promising application today – the monetization of stranded natural gas.