Overview of hydrogen production technologies from biogas and the applications in fuel cells

This review describes the history and development of plasma-assisted catalysis focussing mainly on the use of atmospheric pressure, non-thermal plasma. It identifies the various interactions between the plasma and the catalyst that can modify and activate the catalytic surface and also describes how the catalyst affects the properties of the discharge. Techniques for in situ diagnostics of species adsorbed onto the surface and present in the gas-phase over a range of timescales are described. The effect of temperature on plasma–catalysis can assist in determining differences between thermal catalysis and plasma-activated catalysis and focuses on the meaning of temperature in a system involving non-equilibrium plasma. It can also help to develop an understanding of the gas-phase and surface mechanism of the plasma–catalysis at a molecular level. Our current state of knowledge and ignorance is highlighted and future directions suggested.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/49/24/243001/pdf

Plasma–catalysis: the known knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns

Biogas is a relatively mature renewable energy technology but still most commercial biogas power plants require significant financial incentives. Additionally, local shortages of very cheap digestible feedstocks limit biogas productivity, especially for larger biogas power plants (>1 MWe). Innovations that could improve cost-effectiveness and resource efficiency of biogas energy technology are therefore required. Over the last few years a number of potential process innovations for biogas technology have been proposed and investigated. However, the majority of these novel concepts has minimal or no impact on technology development. Disruptive innovations are very rare, but only they really matter for the economy. Therefore review reports that systematically compare, analyze and evaluate the suitability of these emerging methods with emphasis on technological excellence and realistic commercial potential are needed. This study presents potential process innovations from most recent patent and academic literature proposed for biogas (i) production, (ii) conditioning, (iii) utilization and (iv) industrial symbiosis. Within these four highly interdisciplinary categories the review attempts to provide short practical comments on selected methods and briefly analyzes their perspectives and constraints. Further, relevant biogas process innovation criteria are designed and multiple-criteria assessment of pre-selected potential process innovations is made. The paper concludes with the characterization of innovativeness of selected solutions and suggests future research needs for biogas energy technology that could bring new innovations in near term.

A review of potential innovations for production, conditioning and utilization of biogas with multiple criteria assessment

This paper discusses our recent results on plasma-based CO2 conversion, obtained by a combination of experiments and modeling, for a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD), a microwave plasma and a packed bed DBD reactor. The results illustrate that plasma technology is quite promising for CO2 conversion, but more research is needed to better understand the underlying mechanisms and to further improve the capabilities.

Plasma-based conversion of CO2: current status and future challenges.

In this paper the various elementary plasma—surface interaction processes occurring in plasma catalysis are critically evaluated. Specifically, plasma catalysis at atmospheric pressure is considered. The importance of the various processes is analyzed for the most common plasma catalysis sources, viz. the dielectric barrier discharge and the gliding arc. The role and importance of surface chemical reactions (including adsorption, surface-mediated association and dissociation reactions, and desorption), plasma-induced surface modification, photocatalyst activation, heating, charging, surface discharge formation and electric field enhancement are discussed in the context of plasma catalysis. Numerous examples are provided to demonstrate the importance of the various processes.

Plasma-surface interactions in plasma catalysis

Characteristics of methane reforming using gliding arc reactor

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the optimal condition of the syngas production by reforming of propane using Gliding arc plasma reformer. The gliding arc plasma reformer in 3 phases has been newly designed and developed with a quick starting and fast response time. It can be applicable to the various types of fuels (Hydrocarbons ), and it has a high conversion rate of fuels and high production of hydrogen. The parametric screening studies were carried out according to the changes of a steam feed amount i.e., steam/carbon ratio, total gas flow rate and input electric power. The optimum operating conditions were S/C ratio 2.8, total gas flow rate of 14 L/min and input electric power of 2.4 kW. The result of optimum operating conditions showed the 55 % , 14 % CO, 15 % , 10 % and 4 % . Also, conversion, yield and selectivity were 90 %, 42 %, 15 %, respectively. The energy efficiency and specific energy requirements were 37 % and 334 kJ/mol respectively.

Yoon-Cheol Yang

Papers

Characteristics of methane reforming using gliding arc reactor

Propane Reforming in Gliding Arc Plasma Reformer for SynGas Generation