Model-based analysis of CO2 revalorization for di-methyl ether synthesis driven by solar catalytic reforming

The application of solar energy is investigated for the synthesis of di-methyl ether (DME) in a solar irradiated dry methane reformer (DMR). Solar radiations are concentrated onto a receiver and distributed to the reaction zone to provide necessary energy for syngas (CO and H2) generation. In order to maintain a H2/CO molar ratio of '1', as required in DME synthesis, the produced syngas is processed via two alternative routes: solar reformer coupled in parallel with a non-solar reformer (SoR-NSoR) and solar reformer integrated with a water-gas shift reactor (SoR-WGS). It is found that steam methane reforming (SMR) is the most suitable methodology when coupled with a solar reformer due to high H2 content in the SMR syngas. Further performance analysis is conducted by simulating three days of operation under different insolation levels (high, medium and low irradiations). The simulation results showed that the SoR-WGS configuration produces the highest improvements of 18.7%, 32.2% and 20% in terms of methane, energy and CO2 emission intensity respectively. This enhanced process performance originates from the exothermic nature of the WGS process which helps in controlling the overall syngas composition, whereas the SoR-NSoR requires fossil based thermal energy to drive the NSoR process to similar control targets. This promising improvement of all metrics in SoR-WGS may stimulate in-depth techno-economic feasibility of this unique solar integration for DME and other synthetic fuels production.