Abstract:
Naphtha reforming units are of great interest for hydrogen and reformate production in
petroleum refineries. Conventionally employed packed bed reactors for naphtha
reforming have drawbacks such as a high pressure drop, diffusion limitations in catalyst,
and radial and axial gradients of temperature and concentration. A fluidized bed reactor
(FBR) attends to some of the draw backs of packed bed reactor. Coupled with the
advantages of fluidization, the incorporation of membrane can improve the yield of
products by selectively removing hydrogen from the reaction side. In this work, a
sequential modular simulation (SMS) approach was used to simulate hydrodynamics of a
fluidized-bed membrane reactor (FBMR) for catalytic reforming of naphtha in Aspen Plus
environment. Aspen Plus is used for flowsheet development of the FBMR. The
hydrodynamic parameters and membrane permeation phenomena were implemented
using an interfacing of Excel with the Aspen Plus model of the FBMR. A fluidized-bed
reactor without membrane, i.e., FBR, is also simulated and a comparison is drawn. FBMR
outperformed the FBR in terms of increase in aromatics in reformate stream and effective
separation of hydrogen during the reaction. The proposed method can be readily adopted
by process engineers for design and optimization decisions.
Keywords: Naphtha catalytic reforming; Aspen Plus; Excel interfacing; Two-phase theory of fluidization; Hydrogen production; Fluidized-bed membrane reactor; Increase in aromatic production; Pd–Ag membrane.
