Numerical investigation of oxygen permeation and methane oxy-combustion in a stagnation flow ion transport membrane reactor

In this work, a two-step oxy-combustion reaction kinetics model for methane-oxygen combustion is used to predict the oxy-combustion characteristics in the permeate side of the membrane. More accurate permeation rate characteristics inside this simple symmetric design ITM reactor is also expected using this model. New oxygen permeation model is introduced in this work for an LSCF-1991 ion transport membrane. The simulation of the oxygen permeation process across the membrane has been performed through series of visual C++ user defined function compiled and incorporated to FLUENT. The analysis of the permeation process has been conducted for separation only process (no reactions) using an inert gas (argon) as a sweep gas and a comparison has been done with cases of using CH4 plus CO2 as sweep gases. The effect of reactivity using the same sweep gases (CH4 plus CO2) is investigated by comparing the same cases with and without reactions in the permeate side. It was found that there are important parameters affecting the operation of ITM reactors like the inlet gases temperature, percentage of CH4 in the sweep gases mixture and the reactor geometry. Also, there are less important parameters like, feed and sweep volume flow rates, oxygen partial pressure in the feed side.