Demonstration of mitigation and utilization of ventilation air methane in a pilot scale catalytic reverse flow reactor

Abstract The mitigation and utilization of ventilation air methane was demonstrated in a pilot scale catalytic reverse flow reactor. A kind of non-noble metal oxide catalyst of 1.8 m 3 was loaded and lean methane with a concentration of 0.2–1.0 vol% and a maximum feed flow rate of 800 m 3 /h was processed. The schemes of reactor control and heat recovery, viz., a simple logic-based controller plus hot gas withdrawal from reactor center, as proposed previously by simulation, were verified in this pilot scale reactor. The results prove that the autoregulative time to switch the gas flow direction will drop quickly to zero if a large amount of hot gas is withdrawn from the reactor by using the traditional method. The switching time has a great influence on the heat recovery efficiency, whereas the amount of hot gas removed out of the reactor impacts significantly on the reactor stability. All these experimental observations are in line with the simulation results. The long term operation proves the feasibility of hot gas withdrawal with a heat recovery efficiency of about 56% and the reliable performances of the non-noble metal catalyst in lean methane oxidation with a methane conversion over 90%. These results prove that the catalytic reverse flow reactor and control schemes used in this work are quite effective in the mitigation and utilization of lean methane.