Hydrogen as an energy carrier: A comparative study between decalin and cyclohexane in thermally coupled membrane reactors in gas-to-liquid technology

Due to proposing hydrogen as the main energy carrier, technologies including production, storage and utilization of hydrogen have attracted increasing attention recently. Regarding this, the feasibility of decalin as a promising hydrogen carrier is investigated in this study. The performance of decalin thermally coupled membrane reactor (DCTCMR) is compared with cyclohexane thermally coupled membrane reactor (CTCMR) for Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (FTS) in gas-to-liquid (GTL) technology. Some important parameters such as hydrogen production rate, H2 recovery yield, exothermic and endothermic temperature profiles and etc. are considered as criteria to recognize the most appropriate configuration. A comparison between the modeling results of two coupled configurations shows that DCTCMR is superior to CTCMR owing to achieving remarkably higher hydrogen production (seventeen times) compared with CTCMR. Furthermore, considerably higher H2 recovery yield (about twelve times) and faster dehydrogenation reaction rate in DCTCMR than CTCMR proposes decalin as one of the best hydrogen carriers. This study demonstrates the superiority of DCTCMR to CTCMR owing to achieving remarkably higher hydrogen production rate, H2 recovery yield and recognizing decalin as an appropriate hydrogen carrier.