Dry Reforming of Methane Using Cold Plasma; Kinetic Model Study

Abstract

In this work, the dry reforming of methane was studied using a corona and gliding discharge plasma microreactors. A chemical kinetic model was developed to describe the experimental behavior observed. The kinetic model is proposed based on the assumption that the reactant molecules CH4 or CO2 are attacked by active species produced by the plasma discharges, and the production of this active species are a function of the plasma power. The modelization allowed the prediction of the conversion of the reactants (CH4 and CO2) according to the energy transfer to the gas (). The value is characteristic of the energy cost; the lower β value indicated better efficiency. The value of CH4 was found to be 10.42 and 58.25 J and for CO2 equal to 12.24 and 27.77 J for corona and gliding discharge plasma, respectively. The kinetic model also demonstrated that the methane and carbon dioxide conversion was an exponential function of the plasma energy, and were a linear function of the input energy for a CH4 and CO2 inlet concentration. Our Model also implied that a plasma reactor with a smaller input discharge power has better energy efficiency for CO2 andCH4 conversion.