Membrane reactor winner of the TU/e Design Award 2010

The Spanish engineer Francisco Zaragoza Martin has designed a power station with a new type of membrane reactor. The design is based on pre-combustion technology, whereby the reactor separates hydrogen from CO₂ using ECN’s patented membrane reactor system. The remaining CO₂ can be stored in the earth’s crust, while the hydrogen can be used as fuel for a gas turbine that powers a generator. His report was selected as the best of the TU/e design programmes. According to the judges, Zaragoza Martin has demonstrated that his reactor concept is more compact than alternative concepts with the same output. The design of the power station with CO₂ capture formed part of the Post MSc programme at Eindhoven University of Technology.
The judges were impressed by the way in which Zaragoza Martin managed to combine the model for calculating the efficiency of the power station as a whole (at the global level) with the differential equations of the detailed reactor (at the local level) in an integrated tool. This means changes made at the station level directly result in adjustments to the design of the reactor.
Zaragoza Martin’s reactor concept is based on ECN’s membrane reactor technology. Therefore, it made sense for the student of Eindhoven University of Technology to spend part of his Post MSc programme in Process and Product design at ECN in Petten. Under the supervision of Jan Wilco Dijkstra, Zaragoza Martin was able to make use of ECN’s knowledge of membrane reactors for his design. Zaragoza Martin has now been granted the degree of Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) and has been invited to accept his prize. And of course the fact that the membrane reactor technology designed by ECN is so essential to the winning design also makes it a good day for ECN.

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