Syngas cleanup section with carbon capture and hydrogen-selective membrane

Abstract

A syngas cleanup section includes a water-gas shift reactor, a first operation unit and a second operation unit. The first operation unit includes a high permeance membrane with H/COselectivity in flow communication with the water-gas shift reactor to provide a H-rich permeate stream and an H-poor retentate stream. The second operation unit recovers Hand CO from the retentate stream to produce a single, CO-rich product stream, the entire content of which has a minimum pressure of at least about 10.0 bar. In one embodiment, the second operation unit includes a membrane with Knudsen selectivity for permeating H, CO and CO. In this embodiment, the permeate streams are combined to produce a Hand CO-rich fuel stream used by a combined cycle power generation unit to produce electricity, and the retentate stream is sent to a catalytic oxidation unit to produce the CO-rich product stream. In another embodiment, the second operation unit is the catalytic oxidation unit.