Dimethyl ether synthesis in a gas-solid-solid trickle flow reactor with continuous adsorbent regeneration

Dimethyl ether (DME) as a green fuel is commercially produced by methanol dehydration in an adiabatic fixed bed reactor. This work describes a mathematical modeling and simulation of DME reactor in which Zeolite 4A, with the composition of Na12(Si12Al12O48)·27H2O, is considered as water adsorbent. For this purpose, a gas-solid-solid trickle flow reactor (GSSTFR) is used instead of conventional DME synthesis reactor (CR). The main advantage of GSSTFR over the conventional sorption-enhanced reaction process is the continuous adsorbent regeneration in this novel configuration. The result demonstrates that selective adsorption of water from DME synthesis in the proposed configuration leads to 11.17% enhancement in DME production rate compared to CR. Subsequently, the effect of operating conditions on the performance of the aforementioned reactor is investigated. This paper shows how the concept of in-situ water adsorption is feasible and beneficial for dimethyl ether synthesis.