The objective of this work is to investigate, in the laboratory, the parameters associated with a chemically assisted in situ recovery procedure, using hydrogen chloride (HCI), carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}), and steam (H{sub 2}0), to obtain data useful to develop a process more economic than existing processes and to report all findings. The technical progress of the project is reported. The project status is that the progress is being made towards being able to run meaningful experiments.

We proposed to demonstrate the effectiveness of a catalytic membrane reactor (a ceramic membrane combined with a catalyst) to solely produce methanol by partial oxidation of methane. Methanol is used as a chemical feedstock, gasoline additive, and turbine fuel. Methane partial oxidation using a catalytic membrane reactor has been determined as one of the promising approaches for methanol synthesis from methane. In the original proposal the membrane was used to selectively remove methanol from the reaction zone before carbon oxides form, thus increasing the methanol yield. Methanol synthesis and separation in one step would also make methane more valuable for producing chemicals and fuels. The cooling tube inserted inside the membrane reactor has created a low temperature zone that rapidly quenches the product stream. Both ceramic and metal membranes were tested in this study and similar results were obtained. This membrane reactor system has proved effective for increasing methanol selectivity during CH{sub 4} oxidation. We are currently using this non-isothermal non-permselective membrane reactor, and evaluating modifications to further improve performance. Metal membrane was used to avoid the membrane breakage problem. A series of experiments were carried out in order to optimize the operation of the process. A methanol yield of …