Oxygen removal from oxy-combustion flue gas for CO2 purification via catalytic methane oxidation

Zheng, Q., Zhou, S., Lail, M., & Amato, K. (2018). Oxygen removal from oxy-combustion flue gas for CO2 purification via catalytic methane oxidation. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 57(6), 1954-1960. DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.7b04577

Typical allowable O-2 concentration in recovered CO2 for certain applications including Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) is as low as 100 ppmv. The removal of high content O-2 (3-5%) in oxy-combustion flue gas requires additional compression work in the conventional downstream CO2 purification process. RTI hereby proposes to develop a novel technology for flue gas O-2 removal based on catalytic oxidation of natural gas. Preliminary catalytic tests were performed over various supported Pd and Pt catalysts under simulated oxy-combustion flue gas conditions, with the addition of a stoichiometric amount of CH4 as a model compound for natural gas. Among the studied catalysts, Pd supported on zeolite H-ZSM-5 showed the highest oxygen conversion at relevant conditions. Compared to Pt catalysts, Pd catalysts generally showed higher oxidation reaction kinetics. The catalytic oxidation activity can be further increased by optimizing reaction gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) and total reaction pressure.