Yuswan Muharam

Microreactor for the Catalytic Partial Oxidation of Methane

Fixed-bed reactors for partial oxidation of methane to produce synthetic gas bear a hot-spot problem. To avoid this problem, an alternative reactor, which is called shell and tube type microreactor, has been developed in this work. Combustion and reforming reactions are integrated in this reactor. The microreactor used in this work consists of a 1 cm outsidediameter, 0.8 cm inside-diameter and 11 cm length tube, and a 1.8 cm inside-diameter shell. The tube is made of dense alumina and the shell of quartz. Two different methods ? dip and spray coating ? were performed to coat the tube side with LaNixOy catalyst. Gaseous reactants burn in the tube side to produce flue gases which in turn flow countercurrently and react in the shell side to yield reforming products. The methane conversion reaches 97% at 700oC with the catalyst spray-coated tube, while the catalyst dip-coated tube reaches only 7.78%. Turnover frequencies (TOF) using the catalyst sprayed and dip-coated tubes are 5.75 x 10-5 and 2.24 x 10-5 mol/gram cat.s, respectively. The hydrogen to carbon monoxide ratios produced are greater than the stoichiometric ratio, which are probably caused by carbon deposit through methane cracking and Boudouard reactions.

Techno-economic feasibility of flare gas utilization using adsorbed natural gas

Adsorbed natural gas (ANG) is a natural gas storage technology, which is potential to transport natural gas in small and medium quantity. The objective of this study is to determine the techno-economic feasibility of ANG technology for flare gas to consumers around flare gas sources. The method is process simulation, economic calculation and optimization with variables being ANG selling price, flare gas price, and the percentage of capital financing by the government. The process simulation shows that the ANG product is in the range of 2.07 MMSCFD – 2.97 MMSCFD. The economic calculation results in the interest rate of return of less than 10%. With optimization, the IRR increases to more than 20%.