Patent ID: 7354562

Claim:
A process for producing a CON x -lean product gas from a CO x -containing feed gas, said process comprising: providing a sorption enhanced reactor containing a first bed, an intermediate bed downstream of the first bed and a second bed downstream of the intermediate bed, and wherein the first bed contains a first adsorbent, the second bed contains a mixture of a second adsorbent and a shift catalyst, and the intermediate bed contains the shift catalyst; feeding the feed gas into the reactor at a feed gas pressure during a reaction step, wherein the feed gas comprises H 2 , H 2 O, CO and CO 2 ; contacting the feed gas with the first adsorbent to adsorb an amount of CO 2 from the feed gas and to provide a CO 2 depleted feed gas; contacting the CO 2 depleted feed gas with the shift catalyst to catalyze a shift reaction of CO and H 2 O to form a product mixture comprising CO 2 and H 2 ; contacting the product mixture with the mixture of the second adsorbent and the shift catalyst to produce the product gas, wherein the product gas comprises at least 50 vol. % H 2 and less than 5 combined vol. % CO 2 and CO; regenerating the first adsorbent and the second adsorbent; repressurizing the reactor with a pressurization gas; and countercurrently purging the reactor at the feed gas pressure with a purge gas before regenerating the first adsorbent and the second adsorbent to yield an effluent stream containing unreacted CO and H 2 O, and recycling the effluent stream to the feed gas.