Numerical Investigation of Oxygen Permeation Through a Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3−δ Ion Transport Membrane With Impingement Flow

Abstract

Ion transport membrane (ITM) is considered to be one of the promising techniques for the separation of oxygen from the air for clean energy applications. Studying flow configurations of gases around Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3−δ (BSCF) membrane is presented and discussed in this paper. The effects of the sweep mass flow rate and impingement configurations for the gases flow in the feed and permeation sides have been investigated. In this regard, flow with single or double impingement and impingement with different angles have been simulated and analyzed in order to identify the configurations that would provide the maximum permeation flux. Results show that increasing the sweep flow rate, directly, increases the oxygen permeation flux. It is also found that, in case of single impingement, decreasing the distance between the nozzle and the membrane (H), directly, increases the oxygen permeation flux for constant sweep side nozzle (slot) width (D). The permeation flux increases from around 2.9–3.66 µmole/cm2 s for the ratio H:D from1:1 to 1:4 (i.e., decreasing H to one-fourth of its value). Results show that the double impingement flow gives lower results than the single impingements by about 35.7%. The results also revealed that the optimum configuration is the parallel flow with vacuum in the sweeping side, which gives the highest permeation flux with an increase of more than 41% from that of the parallel configuration with a sweeping gas. Using carbon dioxide as a sweeping gas is better than helium.