ChemEngineering (Oct 2018)

Dry Reforming in a Milli-Scale Reactor Driven by Simulated Sunlight

  • Yige Wang,
  • Fuqiong Lei,
  • Lucas Freiberg,
  • Elham Bagherisereshki,
  • Piyanut Inbamrung,
  • Saowaluk Intarasiri,
  • Goran Jovanovic,
  • Alexandre F. T. Yokochi,
  • Líney Árnadóttir,
  • Nick AuYeung

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/chemengineering2040050
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 4
p. 50

Abstract

Read online

In this study, a directly irradiated, milli-scale chemical reactor with a simple nickel catalyst was designed for dry reforming of methane for syngas. A milli-scale reactor was used to facilitate rapid heating, which is conducive to combating thermal transience caused by intermittent solar energy, as well as reducing startup times. Milli-scale reactors also allow for a distributed and modular process to produce chemicals on a more local scale. In this setup, the catalyst involved in the reaction is located directly in the focal area of the solar simulator, resulting in rapid heating. The effects of mean residence time and temperature on conversion and energy efficiency were tested. The process, which is intended to store thermal energy as chemical enthalpy, achieved 10% thermal-to-chemical energy conversion efficiency at a mean residence time of 0.028 s, temperature of 1000 °C, and molar feed ratio of 1:1 CO2:CH4. A significant portion of the thermal energy input into the reactor was directed toward sensible heating of the feed gas. Thus, this technology has potential to achieve solar-to-chemical efficiency with the integration of recuperative heat exchange.

Keywords