Natural gas reforming to hydrogen energy in low temperature plasma system : report

Abstract

The effect of stage number of multistage AC gliding arc discharge reactors on the process performance ofthe combined reforming and partial oxidation of simulated CO₂-containing natural gas having a CH₄:C₂H₆:C₃H₈:C0₂ molar ratio of 70:5:5:20 was investigated. For the experiments with partial oxidation, either pure oxygen or air was used as the oxygen source with a fixed hydrocarbon-to-oxygen molar ratio of 211. Without partial oxidation at a constant feed flow rate, all conversions of hydrocarbons, except CO₂, greatly increased with increasing number of stages from 1 to 3; but · beyond 3 stages, the reactant conversions remained almost unchanged. However, for a constant residence time, only C₃H₈ conversion gradually increased, whereas the conversions of the other reactants remained almost unchanged. The addition of oxygen was found to significantly enhance the process performance of natural gas · reforming. The utilization of air as an oxygen source showed a. superior process · performance to pure oxygen in terms of reactant conversion and desired product selectivity. The optimum energy consumption of 12.05x 10²⁴ eV per mole of reactants . converted and 9.65x 10²⁴ eV per mole of hydrogen produced was obtained using air as · oxygen source and 3 stages ofplasma reactors at a constant residence time of 4.38 s.