Design of a radial flow fixed-bed reactor with integrated variable heat exchange for more efficient and purer hydrogen production via water gas shift reaction

The water gas shift reaction is an important procedure in high-purity hydrogen production, and achieving high CO conversion in one single reactor is a key optimization objective. This work has developed a novel radial flow fixed-bed reactor for water gas shift reaction with integrated variable heat exchange and numerically investigated the system optimization concepts. The continuous heat removal from the catalyst bed has been proven to fully improve CO conversion at a lower H2O/CO molar ratio. The heat transfer rate distribution can also be flexibly adjusted to ensure sufficiently high and low temperatures in the early and late stages of the reaction, respectively, for a higher conversion. With sufficient coolant, low-temperature and high-temperature catalysts for water gas shift reaction can be combined in one reactor to increase CO conversion to over 98%, and the delayed heat removal configuration can achieve the highest CO conversion (98.50%) with the least proportion of low-temperature catalysts (9.2%).