Cyclic Steady-State Behavior of a Fixed-Bed Adsorptive Reactor for Reverse Water-Gas Shift Reaction

Processes to use CO₂ on an industrial scale are few and far between. One proposal is to apply the reverse water-gas shift reaction (rWGS) to activate CO₂ and produce syngas, which is one of the most versatile feedstock. The rWGS needs high temperatures to yield a favorable equilibrium, which entails high costs. To circumvent the unfavorable equilibrium at lower temperatures, a fixed-bed adsorptive reactor is proposed as a potential solution. The adsorption functionality leads to a periodic operation, due to the regeneration step. The cyclic steady-state behavior of the system is modeled and then optimized based on a technical objective function. Improvements in the objective function of above 800 % can be achieved by manipulating the temperature and concentration profiles inside the reactor.