Hydrogen and syngas production from methane-acetylene rich combustion in inert porous media burner

Abstract

This work shows the experimental results from methane-acetylene rich combustion inside an inert porous media burner with the specific goal of improving the performance of inert porous media burners for hydrogen and syngas production. A cylindrical burner was implemented where temperatures, velocities, and chemical species concentrations were acquired for methane-air mixtures with acetylene addition at different equivalence ratios. Recorded combustion wave temperature profiles retain their sinusoidal like behavior for fuel-rich mixtures. Acetylene addition increases the temperature of the reaction and syngas production for a range of equivalence ratios. It is shown that by adding a small amount of acetylene (2.5% of the total fuel-air mixture), increments in the H2 production of up to 3.04% and 0.36% were achieved for ∅ = 1.2 and ∅ = 2.4, respectively. While an 11% increment on the CO production was recorded for ∅ = 1.2, which presents an opportunity to determine the optimized conditions. Methane-acetylene rich combustion showed improvements on hydrogen and syngas production when compared to methane-air rich mixtures.