Reaction Fundamentals and Reactor Configuration for Methane Dehydroaromatization: Present State and Future Prospects

Natural gas, mainly composed of methane, has gained attention in conversion technologies due to its increased supply and low prices relative to crude oil. It is important in the current energy landscape, and its significance is expected to persist in the future, supporting the transition toward a more sustainable and low-carbon future. The conversion of natural gas into chemicals with added value offers a way to utilize this abundant resource, while promoting energy security and decreasing pollutant emissions. However, direct nonoxidative methane dehydroaromatization (MDA) is still in the initial research stage, and there are uncertainties about enhancement approaches to create a commercially feasible process. We, hence, conducted a thorough review of critical factors that influence the development of efficient MDA processes. These factors include thermodynamic constraints, catalyst design, reaction mechanism, and kinetic models, methane activation pathways, catalyst activity, and selectivity toward desired products. As the core of this review, we discussed various reactor configurations for the MDA process, including packed bed, fluidized bed, membrane-assisted, plasma, and microwave reactors. Detailed analyses were conducted to assess these reactors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. These analyses help select an effective reactor that not only overcomes the thermodynamic constraints and catalyst deactivation challenges of the MDA reaction but also satisfies the requirements for implementation on a commercial scale. As sustainable development of a commercial-scale MDA plant is essential, we further focused on summarizing accomplished reactor modeling and plant-wide economic assessment studies of the MDA process. Based on our analyses, we proposed a conceptual design of a dual-bed circulating microwave membrane fluidized bed reactor as an emerging reactor configuration for the MDA reaction.