Within the project duration the ADREM project focused on the development, construction and testing of 4 reactor technology concepts (WP1-4) and the associated catalysts (WP5):
• WP1: Two microwave-heating systems were designed to convert methane via non-oxidative coupling mechanism, i.e. Travelling Wave Reactor (TWR) at TU Delft and Multi-stage Monomodal microwave reactor (MMR) at University of Zaragoza.
• WP2: Two nanosecond plasma reactors enabling in situ plasma-catalyst integration and plasma-followed-by catalyst configuration have been constructed at KU Leuven.
• WP3: A gas-solid vortex reactor in a static geometry, a novel reactor technology, for performing oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) was designed and developed at Ghent University.
• WP4: Two plasma reactors, including spark plasma reactor were developed at National Institute of Chemistry.
After three years of initial research, two of the above reactor concepts, the multi-stage monomodal microwave reactor and the nano-second plasma reactor, have been selected for the Technology Readiness Level 5 testing under industrially relevant conditions. The tests included a continuous long-term reactor operation and were the first such tests ever carried out in those types of reactors. Both test programs concerned the non-oxidative coupling of methane and were successfully executed. The microwave reactor was shown to run without human intervention for 295 hours and to produce benzene in amounts close to expected values from the lab experiments. The plasma reactor has proven its capability for non-oxidative methane coupling into C2 products under industrially relevant condition over >200 hours of automated operation. The continuing research on the remaining reactor concepts that were not selected to the TRL5 testing, has shown their potential applicability in other methane valorisation chemistries.
The research results of the project were disseminated in numerous scientific papers and conference presentations, including International Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering (ISCRE25, Florence 2018), the European Congress of Chemical Engineering (ECCE, Florence 2019) and the International Conference on Unconventional Catalysis, Reactors and Applications (UCRA, Zaragoza 2019)
