Investigation of CO Injection Effect on the Methanol Production in a Single Type Reactor in the Presence of Catalyst Deactivation

In this work, the behavior of a single-type industrial methanol reactor while the 5% CO was injected into the 95% of feed was investigated. For the dynamic simulation purposed, a heterogeneous one-dimensional model has been developed in the presence of long term catalyst deactivation. The performance of the reactor with CO injection to the feed entrance was investigated and the product and reactant mole fraction profiles of the aforesaid reactor were compared with that of a conventional single type (CMR) and membrane methanol reactor (MMR). The simulation results represent 14.24% and 22.93% enhancement in the yield of methanol production in comparison with MMR and CMR, respectively, while 5% CO was injected into the 95% of the feed. Also, by CO injection to the feed, water production during methanol synthesis via CO2 hydrogenation which accelerates the catalyst deactivation and reduces methanol production rate, is reduced greatly. Additionally, nowadays CO is an important cause of pollution and a hazardous material in many industrial processes and using it in these processes is one of the ways to solve the pollution problem.