Production of hydrogen from hydrogen sulfide assisted by dielectric barrier discharge

Abstract

Hydrogen production by non-thermal plasma (NTP) assisted direct decomposition of hydrogen sulfide (H 2S) was carried out in a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor with stainless steel inner electrode and copper wire as the outer electrode. The specific advantage of the present process is the direct decomposition of H 2S in to H 2 and S and the novelty of the present study is the in-situ removal of sulfur that was achieved by operating DBD plasma reactor at ∼430 K. Optimization of various parameters like the gas residence time in the discharge, frequency, initial concentration of H 2S and temperature was done to achieve hydrogen production in an economically feasible manner. The typical results indicated that NTP is effective in dissociating H 2S into hydrogen and sulfur and it has been observed that by optimizing various parameters, it is possible to achieve H 2 production at 300 kJ/mol H 2 that corresponds to ∼3.1 eV/H 2, which is less than the energy demand during the steam methane reforming (354 kJ/mol H 2 or ∼3.7 eV/H 2).