Scale-Up of Innovative Honeycomb Reactors for Power-to-Gas Applications - The Project Store&Go.

Area of Science:

• Chemical Engineering
• Energy Storage
• Catalysis

Background:

• The German Energiewende (energy transition) relies heavily on electricity, necessitating solutions for non-electric energy demands and large-scale energy storage.
• Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG) offers a viable pathway, produced using hydrogen from water electrolysis and CO2 from renewable sources.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the challenge of efficient heat removal and utilization in catalytic SNG production.
• To scale up a laboratory-proven metallic honeycomb reactor for MW-scale methanation.

Main Methods:

• Experimental determination of heat transfer and kinetic data for the honeycomb methanation process.
• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) calculations for reactor design optimization.
• Scale-up of the methanation reactor to MW-scale within the EU-funded Store&Go project.

Main Results:

• A metallic honeycomb reactor demonstrated effective heat management capabilities at laboratory scale.
• The reactor design facilitates optimized operation due to its high thermal conductivity.
• The project is progressing towards building and demonstrating a 1 MW SNG feed-in plant.

Conclusions:

• The honeycomb reactor technology is a promising solution for efficient heat management in SNG production.
• Successful scale-up to MW-scale is crucial for integrating SNG into the broader energy system.
• The Store&Go project aims to validate the full-scale integrated operation of this SNG technology.