Ideas As a Process Intensification Tool with Application to Natural Gas Reforming Based Hydrogen Production

In this work, process intensification is identified as a process synthesis activity aiming at significant improvements over traditional process designs. The infinite-dimensional state-space (IDEAS) conceptual framework is put forward as a systematic tool for process intensification, which can identify fundamental limitations to the attainable performance by networks of technologies under consideration. The employed approach allows for a broad search of the state-space for process intensification opportunities, even by low dimensional IDEAS linear programming approximations that always retain design feasibility. The proposed process intensification methodology is applied to a case study of natural gas reforming based hydrogen production. The obtained results identify intensified process designs featuring hot/cold utility costs that in certain cases can be lower by more than an order of magnitude to those of traditional designs.