Experimental Study of the Reforming of Methane with Carbon Dioxide over Coal Char

Abstract

As one of the fundamental issues of the new poly-generation system on the basis of gasification gas and coke oven gas, carbon dioxide reforming of methane experiments have been performed over coal chars derived from different parent coals in a lab-scale fixed-bed reactor (internal diameter 12 mm, length 700 mm). The char derived from TongChuan coal exhibited higher activity than other samples employed under the same conditions. After the reforming reaction, the char samples were covered with different amounts of carbon deposition which resulted in the surface areas decrease. As the flow rate of feed gas increased from 200 ml/min to 600 ml/min over the Xuzhou char sample at 1050 degrees Celsius, the conversion of methane decreased from 52.7% to 17.5% and the H2 /CO dropped from 0.75 to 0.55. While maintaining the flow rate of CO2 at 20ml/min at 1050 degrees Celsius, the mole ratio of reactants CH4/CO2 was varied from 1 to 1.75 which led to the H2/CO ratio increase from 0.75 to 1.2.