Comparative techno-economic and life cycle assessment of fixed and fluidized bed reactors for dry reforming toward sustainable carbon monoxide and hydrogen production

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a benchmark for DRM reactor performance at commercial scale, including cost breakdown and sensitivity to H2 price.

🏢実務担当者:Offers quantitative guidance for selecting fixed vs. fluidized bed DRM reactors based on capital availability, carbon policy stringency, and operational continuity.

🏛政策担当者:Demonstrates how carbon pricing and by-product markets influence the economic viability of DRM, supporting design of incentives for low-carbon industrial processes.

Carbon monoxide is a key platform chemical for fuels and chemical synthesis, while hydrogen serves as an energy carrier and reducing agent. However, their conventional production routes are energy-intensive and environmentally unsustainable. The dry reforming of methane (DRM) is a promising alternative that utilizes methane and carbon dioxide to produce low-carbon CO, with hydrogen as a valuable co-product. Although fixed-bed and fluidized-bed DRM reactors have been widely studied at the laboratory scale, their commercial viability under consistent process boundaries remains insufficiently explored. In this study, fixed-bed and fluidized-bed DRM reactors were systematically compared using experiment-calibrated process simulations, followed by techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment for a 500 tons of CO per day process. Under the baseline condition of 850°C and a CO 2 /CH 4 feed ratio of 2, the fixed-bed process achieved a levelized cost of 366 USD/ton-CO, approximately 39% below the market price, with net CO₂ emissions of 0.283 kg-CO 2 /kg-CO. The fluidized-bed process exhibited a higher cost of 531 USD/ton-CO while achieving slightly lower net emissions of 0.278 kg-CO 2 /kg-CO. Sensitivity analysis indicated maximum cost variations of 30.1% and 22.0% for the fixed-bed and fluidized-bed configurations, respectively, primarily driven by the market value of by-product H 2 . Overall, the fixed-bed DRM process is favored under mild carbon regulation and capital-constrained conditions, whereas the fluidized-bed configuration becomes more competitive for continuous high-temperature operation, coke-resilient performance, and stringent carbon policies. These results provide quantitative guidance for selecting DRM reactors in diverse industrial and policy scenarios.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccst.2026.100620first seen 2026-05-30 04:43:18 · last seen 2026-06-03 04:44:06