Hydrogen carrier Process Flowsheets & Simulations
Explore 2 validated, solved Hydrogen carrier simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: ammonia, n2, h2, methylcyclohexane, toluene. Open any one directly in your browser.
Solved via: PENG-ROBINSON.
Ammonia cracking + H2 purification
Green ammonia is a widely proposed hydrogen carrier for shipping — easier to liquefy and transport than liquid H2 itself, then cracked back to H2 at the point of use. A fixed-conversion reactor dissociates NH3 (2 NH3 -> N2 + 3 H2, endothermic, 99% conversion at a typical 600 C cracking-furnace outlet) and the cracked gas is polished by an adsorption stage to fuel-cell-grade H2. Honesty note: this models the adsorption stage as a single equilibrium Langmuir contact (competitive isotherm, H2 weakly adsorbed vs. N2/NH3 strongly adsorbed) — a real PSA's cyclic pressure-swing/purge steps aren't modeled, only the equilibrium separation a cycle is built around. A true gas-phase membrane stage was left out for the same reason: the solver's membrane unit op is a liquid reverse-osmosis model (osmotic-pressure driven), not a gas-permeation membrane, so it doesn't apply here.
5 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
18 0
View & openLOHC hydrogen release (methylcyclohexane dehydrogenation)
A liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) power train: methylcyclohexane (MCH) is preheated and catalytically dehydrogenated (MCH -> toluene + 3H2, endothermic, equilibrium-limited to ~90% single-pass conversion) to release hydrogen for downstream power generation. A flash drum separates the H2-rich gas from the liquid; a distillation column then recovers the unreacted MCH overhead and recycles it to the reactor feed, closing a real tight liquid recycle loop, while spent toluene leaves the bottoms (to be re-hydrogenated back to MCH off-site, closing the supply-chain loop — out of scope for this dehydrogenation-side flowsheet). Screening-fidelity note: MCH and toluene are genuinely close-boiling (relative volatility ~1.4 under this thermo package at column conditions), so the recycle carries real toluene along with the recovered MCH rather than a sharp cut — a production column would use more stages to purify it further; this shows the recycle topology and its convergence, not an optimized column design.
8 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
18 0
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