Abstract
Regarding the trend of hydrogen-powered fuel cell engine development, hydrogen fuel is undisputedly the next generation renewable and sustainable energy carrier. The steam reforming of methane (SRM) is a field-proven technology for efficient hydrogen production. However, producing low-carbon hydrogen is the most technical challenge related to available hydrogen production technologies. This paper investigated the process analysis of SRM for low-carbon hydrogen production using concentrated solar energy as a heat source. Analysis of the solar SRM is carried out considering the reformate gas and their influencing factors. The operating temperature of 200–1000 °C and the pressure of 1.02–30 bar were considered when the mass ratio of steam-to-methane in feed gas was varied from 1.0 to 4.0. It was found that the composition of reformate gas, hydrogen yield, methane and steam conversion rate, the thermal efficiency of reforming reactor, and volume flow of reformate gas are significantly affected by the operating parameters including temperature, pressure, and the mass ratio of feed gas. Carbon content in the yield of hydrogen produced can be limited by considering the water–gas shift reaction in the SRM process. Besides, the centralized tower type solar concentrating system is selected as the heat source of the SRM process. The effect of solar radiation on the operation performance of the solar SRM process was analyzed. Direct normal irradiation is a key factor affecting the operating performance of the solar SRM process.
Highlights
Developing clean fuel production technology is a promising way to meet the worldwide increasing energy demands with a great contribution to mitigating the raising effect of greenhouse gases and environmental pollution hazards
Material balance analysis of feed and reformate gas According to the literature, the process modeling of the steam reforming (SRM) can be simulated by different so ware with diverse mathematical models
Important factors including mass ow ratio of H2O/CH4 Methane (CH4) Steam (H2O)/ CH4 in the feed gas, reaction temperature, and operating pressure of the feed gas that can in uence the compositions of reformate gas in the reformer are considered during the numerical analysis
Summary
Developing clean fuel production technology is a promising way to meet the worldwide increasing energy demands with a great contribution to mitigating the raising effect of greenhouse gases and environmental pollution hazards. Apart from increasing environmental pollution effects, the prices of fossil fuels such as natural gas and oil are increasing unceasingly while its reserves are decreasing. According to the statistical review of world energy 2018, the reserves of natural gas (NG) and oil are limited to a range of 40–60 years while the reserves of coal can last for more than 150 years.[1] The increasing interest in the issues related to environmental pollution and economic growth have recently led to the development of next-generation sustainable and renewable clean fossil fuel production as energy carriers. Water–gas shi reaction is an exothermic type reaction This might lead to excessive CO2 generation in hydrogen-rich gas produced.[6,7] Steam methane reforming reaction can be typically described by the following equations
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