Methane Pyrolysis in a Liquid Metal Bubble Column Reactor: A Model Approach Combining Bubble Dynamics with Byproduct and Soot Formation

Abstract

Methane pyrolysis is a promising bridging technology to mitigate the effects of climate change. By decarbonizing natural gas, hydrogen can be produced from fossil fuels without creating CO2 emissions. The focus of future process optimization should not only be on the hydrogen yield and the energy efficiency but also on the carbon products and possible byproduct formation. During methane pyrolysis in a liquid metal (LM) bubble column reactor, at least two very distinct types of carbon are synthesized: soot particles and graphene‐like carbon sheets. A model is presented that couples a description of bubble dynamics in a LM bubble column reactor with a kinetic mechanism, originally developed for the combustion of natural gas that includes byproduct and soot formation. The model is validated by comparing it with an experimental dataset that covers a broad range of process conditions and the implications for carbon and byproduct formation are discussed. The good agreement of model results and experimental data shows that the combustion kinetic mechanism may be applied to methane pyrolysis and that the selected way of modeling bubble fluid dynamics in LM results in a good estimation of the actual bubble residence time in the optically nonaccessible liquid.