Temperature control of the water gas shift reaction in microstructured reactors

Microchannel reactors offer unique possibilities for temperature control of chemical reactions due to the strong coupling of channel and wall temperatures. This may be applied to all chemical reactions which require a certain temperature profile to achieve an optimum yield. For the reformation of hydrocarbons for fuel cell applications a low CO concentration of the product gas is desired. In conventional systems, this is achieved by sequentially processing the reformate through a high and low temperature water gas shift reactor because increased temperature enlarges the reaction rate while lower temperature shifts the equilibrium to the desired small CO concentrations. However, for every gas composition arising during the reaction process an optimum temperature exists at which the reaction rate is highest. We will demonstrate that this optimum temperature profile to a good approximation can be achieved in a single step WGS reactor by controlling the temperature via cooling gas flowing in counter current to the reformate. Furthermore, the effect of water addition (steam injection) is analysed for a conventional two-step adiabatic reactor system and the possible size reduction in an integrated heat-exchanger reactor under comparable conditions is validated. Finally, the effect of diffusion limitations at various channel dimensions is investigated applying a two-dimensional model which allows a trade-off between pressure drop or respective reactor size and performance when dimensioning a real system in future.