Co-production of hydrogen and electricity from autothermal reforming of natural gas by means of Pd-Ag membranes

In this paper, the use of two Water Gas Shift (WGS) Hydrogen Separator Membrane Reactors (HSMRs) is proposed downstream of a natural gas Autothermal Reformer (ATR), for hydrogen and electricity co-production with low carbon dioxide emissions. Starting from an advanced ATR plant based on state-of-the-art technologies with carbon capture, a novel configuration is proposed. Application of HSMRs allows a significant layout simplification and the reduction of the number of components.Hydrogen separation by means of membrane reactors allows carbon capture higher than 99% compared to 87% of the reference case. Simulation results show that the membrane based power plant achieves higher equivalent fuel conversion efficiency even with a significant amount of electricity produced. Moreover, the innovative solution allows to produce electricity and hydrogen at different ratio without affecting the overall performances.