Membrane reactor for methanol synthesis using si‐rich lta zeolite membrane

Abstract

We successfully demonstrated the effect of a membrane reactor for methanol synthesis to improve one‐pass CO2 conversion. An Si‐rich LTA membrane for dehydration from a methanol synthesis reaction field was synthesized by the seed‐assisted hydrothermal synthesis method. The H2O permselective performance of the membrane showed 1.5 × 10−6 mol m−2 s−1 Pa−1 as H2O permeance and around 2,000 as selectivity of H2O/MeOH at 473 K. From the results of membrane reactor tests, the CO2 conversion of the membrane reactor was higher than that of the conventional packed‐bed reactor under the all of experimental conditions. Especially, at 4 MPa of reaction pressure, the conversion using the membrane reactor was around 60%. In the case of using a packed‐bed reactor, the conversion was 20% under the same conditions. In addition, the calculated and experimental conversion were in good agreement in both the case of the membrane reactor and packed‐bed reactor.