Performance Comparison of Autothermal Reactor Configurations for Methane Combustion

Proficient and cost-effective alternative approaches to waste treatment need to be adopted by industries to comply with emission guidelines imposed by environmental regulatory authorities. Surprisingly, only a few processes lend themselves to such possibilities. One example of such a process is the catalytic combustion of volatile organic compounds found in industrial exhausts. The exothermic nature of catalytic combustion enables autothermal operation of reactors with realizable reactor configurations such as a reactor with a feed effluent heat exchanger, a reverse flow reactor (RFR), and multi-port switching reactor (MPSR). A precise comparison between these different reactor designs for methane combustion is presented here. Simulation results indicate that the RFR is efficient for lean feed conditions while the MPSR is appropriate for rich feed conditions. This observation leads to the proposal of a new reactor configuration which is shown to be efficient even under drastically changing operating conditions.