An Efficient Strategy for Electroreduction Reactor Outlet Fractioning into Valuable Products

In this work, two industrial dual-step pressure swing adsorption (PSA) processes were designed and simulated to obtain high-purity methane, CO₂, and syngas from a gas effluent of a CO₂ electroreduction reactor using different design configurations. Among the set of zeolites that was investigated using Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations, NaX and MFI were the ones selected. The dual-PSA process for case study 1 is only capable of achieving a 90.5% methane purity with a 95.2% recovery. As for case study 2, methane is obtained with a 97.5% purity and 95.3% recovery. Both case studies can produce CO₂ with high purity and recovery (>97 and 95%, respectively) and syngas with a H₂/CO ratio above 4. Although case study 2 allows methane to be used as domestic gas, a much higher value for its energy consumption is observed compared to case study 1 (64.9 vs 29.8 W h mol_CH4^-1).