Purge gas recovery of ammonia synthesis plant by integrated configuration of catalytic hydrogen-permselective membrane reactor and solid oxide fuel cell as a novel technology

•A new configuration is proposed for purge gas recovery of ammonia synthesis plant.•A membrane reactor is used to generate pure hydrogen as feed of SOFC.•An electrochemical model for SOFC is developed.•Parametric analysis of the membrane reactor and SOFC performance is done.

The purge gas emission of ammonia synthesis plant which contains hazardous components is one of the major sources of environmental pollution. Using integrated configuration of catalytic hydrogen-permselective membrane reactor and solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system is a new approach which has a great impact to reduce the pollutant emission. By application of this method, not only emission of ammonia and methane in the atmosphere is prevented, hydrogen is produced through the methane steam reforming and ammonia decomposition reactions that take place simultaneously in a catalytic membrane reactor. The pure generated hydrogen by recovery of the purge gas in the Pd–Ag membrane reactor is used as a feed of SOFC. Since water is the only byproduct of the electrochemical reaction in the SOFC, it is recycled to the reactor for providing the required water of the reforming reaction. Performance investigation of the reactor represents that the rate of hydrogen permeation increases with enhancing the reactor temperature and pressure. Also modeling results indicate that the SOFC performance improves with increasing the temperature and fuel utilization ratio. The generated power by recovery of the purging gas stream of ammonia synthesis plant in the Razi petrochemical complex is about 8 MW.