Single-stage temperature-controllable water gas shift reactor with catalytic nickel plates

In this study, a microstructured reactor with catalytic nickel plates is newly designed and developed for proper heat management in an exothermic water gas shift WGS reaction. The reactor is designed to increase the reactor capacity simply by numbering-up a set of a catalyst layers and heat exchanger layers. The WGS reactor is built up with two sets of a catalyst layers and heat exchanger layers. The performance of the reactor is verified by WGS testing with the variation of the furnace temperatures, gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) and coolant (N2) flow rate. At a GHSV of 10,000 h−1, CO conversion reaches the equilibrium value with a CH4 selectivity of ≤0.5% at the furnace temperature of ≥375 °C. At high GHSV (40,000 h−1), CO conversion decreases considerably because of the heat from the exothermic WGS reaction at a large reactants mass. By increasing the coolant flow rate, the heat from the WGS reaction is properly managed, leading an increase of the CO conversion to the equilibrium value at GHSV of 40,000 h−1.