Investigating the Plasma-Assisted and Thermal Catalytic Dry Methane Reforming for Syngas Production: Process Design, Simulation and Evaluation

Evangelos Delikonstantis, Marco Scapinello and Georgios D. Stefanidis
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Evangelos Delikonstantis: Process Engineering for Sustainable Systems (ProcESS), Department of Chemical Engineering KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200F, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
Marco Scapinello: Process Engineering for Sustainable Systems (ProcESS), Department of Chemical Engineering KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200F, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
Georgios D. Stefanidis: Process Engineering for Sustainable Systems (ProcESS), Department of Chemical Engineering KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200F, 3001 Leuven, Belgium

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 9, 1-27

Abstract: The growing surplus of green electricity generated by renewable energy technologies has fueled research towards chemical industry electrification. By adapting power-to-chemical concepts, such as plasma-assisted processes, cheap resources could be converted into fuels and base chemicals. However, the feasibility of those electrified processes at large scale has not been investigated yet. Thus, the current work strives to compare, for first time in the literature, plasma-assisted production of syngas, from CH 4 and CO 2 (dry methane reforming), with thermal catalytic dry methane reforming. Specifically, both processes are conceptually designed to deliver syngas suitable for methanol synthesis (H 2 /CO ≥ 2 in mole). The processes are simulated in the Aspen Plus process simulator where different process steps are investigated. Heat integration and equipment cost estimation are performed for the most promising process flow diagrams. Collectively, plasma-assisted dry methane reforming integrated with combined steam/CO 2 methane reforming is an effective way to deliver syngas for methanol production. It is more sustainable than combined thermal catalytic dry methane reforming with steam methane reforming, which has also been proposed for syngas production of H 2 /CO ≥ 2; in the former process, 40% more CO 2 is captured, while 38% less H 2 O is consumed per mol of syngas. Furthermore, the plasma-assisted process is less complex than the thermal catalytic one; it requires higher amount of utilities, but comparable capital investment.

Keywords: dry methane reforming; plasma-assisted reforming; process modeling; energy efficiency; process evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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