Optimization of Power to Gas system with cooled reactor for CO2 methanation: Start-up and shut-down tests with Ru-based and Ni-based kinetics

The dynamic behavior of a methanation process is analyzed in the context of Power to Gas (PtG) technology, to convert carbon dioxide from different sources and hydrogen produced via electrolysis with renewable energy to synthetic methane. The process configuration consists of a single cooled plug flow reactor (PFR) where both ruthenium and nickel-based kinetic models are tested in the Aspen Dynamics simulation environment. In particular, dynamic analyses are performed to study the start-up and shut-down phases and respect injection parameters in the existing gas network. The process consists of three main sections: conditioning, reaction and separation. After the development and optimization of the control system, the start-up and shut-down tests are carried out, to study the trend of composition for the injection in the gas network. The plant size is set according to the following values: 700 Nm3/h of hydrogen and 175 Nm3/h of carbon dioxide, which correspond to the methanation reaction stochiometric ratio. Different cases are considered in both the start-up and shut-down tests, by changing the GHSV values and the catalyst adopted. Moreover, in the shut-down test two different rates are considered to evaluate the behavior of the system.