Thermodynamic analysis of plant-wide CLC-SESMR scheme for H2 production: Studying the effect of oxygen carrier supports

Abstract Sorption enhanced steam methane reforming (SESMR) integrated with chemical looping combustion (CLC) is one of the most capable greener technologies that allows co-generation of H 2 from natural gas together with CO 2 capture. The performance of CLC mainly depends on the sustained reactivity, strength and durability of oxygen carriers (OCs). A suitable combination of active OCs with optimal inert composition is essential to meet the overall thermal demand of integrated CLC-SESMR process. In this work, the effect of inert OC supports on the performance of CLC-SESMR has been studied through thermodynamic analysis based on steady-state plant wide models developed using ASPEN plus. Ni-based OCs are considered with two different support materials, SiC/Al 2 O 3 and MgAl 2 O 4 at different inert compositions ranging from 0 to 70% by weight. The sensitivity analysis results revealed that H 2 purity and CO 2 captured are directly proportional to the inert composition while H 2 yield is inversely proportional. The optimal inert compositions are found to be 30% and 40% by weight for the respective cases of SiC/Al 2 O 3 and MgAl 2 O 4 . In both the cases, the overall performance of CLC-SESMR is found to be nearly same, i.e., with 97% overall methane conversion, 96% CO 2 captured, 98.3% H 2 purity, 2.24 H 2 yield, and 71.4% net plant efficiency.