Membrane reactor microstructure for polymer grade olefin production and hydrogen cogeneration

The current communication describes research work on effective membrane reactor nanostructures and nanoreaction-nanoseparation technology for polymer grade olefin production via catalytic paraffin dehydrogenation reactions. Emphasis is given in systems of permreactors and permeators to perform the described reactive and separative operations. We elaborate on new membrane microstructure designs for paraffin dehydrogenations including the design of experiments, operation, and best parameter selection and optimization of such systems. The described processes are of current significance in the area of new microreactor design and operation including hydrocarbon processing and conversion to valuable fuels and chemicals such as hydrogen, olefins, and polyolefins. These improved results are because of the unique design characteristics of the examined microreactor systems to perform accurate multiphase and heterogeneous functions into one unit operation. A number of membrane reactor configurations were made and tested on stream for the catalytic propane dehydrogenation reaction to propylene with successful results. Some of the results are discussed below which show the better performance of nanostructured membrane reactors for the specific dehydrogenation.