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Natural gas at remote locations would greatly benefit from on-site processing using modular technologies such as dehydroaromatization (DHA). This work models an intensified DHA process to increase product yield and methane conversion by coupling the reactor with a chemical looping unit that effectively separates hydrogen through a redox cycle and a temperature swing adsorption process to remove the aromatics and water and recycle unconverted methane. We postulate dynamic models and steady-state surrogate models to analyze and optimize the production of the aromatic product. The optimum methane conversion of 48% and the aromatic yield of 42% occur at a recycle ratio of 0.47 and a reactor temperature of 725 °C.

We report H2adsorption capacities reaching 0.05 wt % at 303 K and at 1 atm H2pressure on solid-state CuCl-exchanged [Al]-SSZ-13 and [B]-SSZ-13 zeolites. Differential heat of H2adsorption is found in the range between 16 and 48 kJ mol H2–1on Cu(I)-SSZ-13 at 323 K and isosteric heat of adsorption is found between 20 and 55 kJ mol H2–1on Cu(I)-[B]-SSZ-13 at temperatures between 293 and 323 K. Strong interactions between H2and the copper cations in Cu(I)-SSZ-13 are evidenced using Rietveld refinements of neutron powder diffraction patterns revealing Cu–deuterium (D2) distances of 2.3(2) and 2.41(1) Å. A temperature-dependent Cu(I) migrationaway from the six-membered ring (6MR) and eight-membered ring (8MR)is related to the high adsorption capacities of the samples at 303 K. At 10 K, access to Cu(I) at 6MR is sterically hindered by framework oxygen atoms (Cu–Oframeworkdistance of 2.196(5) Å), rationalizing the low H2adsorption capacities of Cu(I)-SSZ-13 samples as compared to Na-SSZ-13 at 77 K.