IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v260y2022ics0360544222018424.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Experimental comparison of solar methane pyrolysis in gas-phase and molten-tin bubbling tubular reactors

Author

Listed:
  • Msheik, Malek
  • Rodat, Sylvain
  • Abanades, Stéphane

Abstract

This study experimentally compares solar methane pyrolysis in gas phase and molten tin for hydrogen and solid carbon production. Molten media are expected to facilitate carbon separation and to enhance solar-to-gas heat transfer. Effects of temperature (1000–1400 °C), gas feed flow rate (0.5–1.0 NL/min), and methane molar fraction in the feed (0.1–0.5) on methane decomposition were investigated in a tubular solar reactor. Methane conversion in molten tin was significantly lower than in gas phase at all temperatures (e.g., 64% vs. 92% at 1300 °C). It was justified by the negligible catalytic activity of tin, the small gas-liquid surface contact (bubble diameter ∼5 mm) and the reduced bubble-tin contact time, in comparison with gas-phase pyrolysis (e.g., 0.83 s vs. 0.5 s for 0.5 NL/min gas feed at 1300 °C). For both routes, a temperature increase (1000–1400 °C) improved methane conversion (gas phase: 2–98%, molten tin: 0–91%). Increasing gas feed flow rate (0.5–1.0 NL/min) decreased conversion (gas phase: 93-85%, molten tin: 64-48% at 1300 °C) by reducing space-time in gas phase (0.83–0.42 s) or by inducing bubbles coalescence in molten tin. Increasing methane molar fraction in the feed generally decreased methane conversion but energy efficiencies were enhanced. The carbon produced in gas-phase pyrolysis was carbon black powder (50–100 nm particle size) and carbon sheets in molten tin.

Suggested Citation

  • Msheik, Malek & Rodat, Sylvain & Abanades, Stéphane, 2022. "Experimental comparison of solar methane pyrolysis in gas-phase and molten-tin bubbling tubular reactors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:260:y:2022:i:c:s0360544222018424
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2022.124943
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544222018424
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2022.124943?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Malek Msheik & Sylvain Rodat & Stéphane Abanades, 2021. "Methane Cracking for Hydrogen Production: A Review of Catalytic and Molten Media Pyrolysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-35, May.
    2. Lior, Noam, 2008. "Energy resources and use: The present situation and possible paths to the future," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 842-857.
    3. Ozalp, Nesrin & Ibrik, Karim & Al-Meer, Mariam, 2013. "Kinetics and heat transfer analysis of carbon catalyzed solar cracking process," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 74-81.
    4. Wang, Fuqiang & Shi, Xuhang & Zhang, Chuanxin & Cheng, Ziming & Chen, Xue, 2020. "Effects of non-uniform porosity on thermochemical performance of solar driven methane reforming," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    5. Abánades, A. & Rubbia, C. & Salmieri, D., 2012. "Technological challenges for industrial development of hydrogen production based on methane cracking," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 359-363.
    6. Rodat, Sylvain & Abanades, Stéphane & Boujjat, Houssame & Chuayboon, Srirat, 2020. "On the path toward day and night continuous solar high temperature thermochemical processes: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    7. Garcia, Gabriel & Arriola, Emmanuel & Chen, Wei-Hsin & De Luna, Mark Daniel, 2021. "A comprehensive review of hydrogen production from methanol thermochemical conversion for sustainability," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    8. Aydin, Muhammed Iberia & Dincer, Ibrahim, 2022. "An assessment study on various clean hydrogen production methods," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 245(C).
    9. Pashchenko, Dmitry & Makarov, Ivan, 2021. "Carbon deposition in steam methane reforming over a Ni-based catalyst: Experimental and thermodynamic analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    10. Cai, Lei & He, Tianzhi & Xiang, Yanlei & Guan, Yanwen, 2020. "Study on the reaction pathways of steam methane reforming for H2 production," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    11. Chein, Rei-Yu & Lu, Cheng-Yang & Chen, Wei-Hsin, 2022. "Syngas production via chemical looping reforming using methane-based feed and NiO/Al2O3 oxygen carrier," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 250(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhang, Lin & Deng, Chang & Liu, Xiaojing, 2024. "Energy transfer and interaction between liquid metal with water," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 288(C).
    2. Pashchenko, Dmitry, 2023. "Hydrogen-rich gas as a fuel for the gas turbines: A pathway to lower CO2 emission," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tang, Xin-Yuan & Zhang, Kai-Ran & Yang, Wei-Wei & Dou, Pei-Yuan, 2023. "Integrated design of solar concentrator and thermochemical reactor guided by optimal solar radiation distribution," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 263(PB).
    2. Chen, Zong & Zhang, Rongjun & Xia, Guofu & Wu, Yu & Li, Hongwei & Sun, Zhao & Sun, Zhiqiang, 2021. "Vacuum promoted methane decomposition for hydrogen production with carbon separation: Parameter optimization and economic assessment," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    3. Malek Msheik & Sylvain Rodat & Stéphane Abanades, 2021. "Methane Cracking for Hydrogen Production: A Review of Catalytic and Molten Media Pyrolysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-35, May.
    4. Yang, Wei-Wei & Tang, Xin-Yuan & Ma, Xu & Li, Jia-Chen & Xu, Chao & He, Ya-Ling, 2023. "Rapid prediction, optimization and design of solar membrane reactor by data-driven surrogate model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    5. Sirui Tong & Bin Miao & Lan Zhang & Siew Hwa Chan, 2022. "Decarbonizing Natural Gas: A Review of Catalytic Decomposition and Carbon Formation Mechanisms," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-30, April.
    6. Zhang, Hao & Shuai, Yong & Lougou, Bachirou Guene & Jiang, Boshu & Yang, Dazhi & Pan, Qinghui & Wang, Fuqiang & Huang, Xing, 2022. "Effects of foam structure on thermochemical characteristics of porous-filled solar reactor," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(PC).
    7. Keipi, Tiina & Li, Tian & Løvås, Terese & Tolvanen, Henrik & Konttinen, Jukka, 2017. "Methane thermal decomposition in regenerative heat exchanger reactor: Experimental and modeling study," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 823-832.
    8. Rezapour, Mojtaba & Gholizadeh, Mohammad, 2021. "Analysis of methanol thermochemical reactor with volumetric solar heat flux based on Parabolic Trough Concentrator," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 1088-1100.
    9. Ozalp, N. & Abedini, H. & Abuseada, M. & Davis, R. & Rutten, J. & Verschoren, J. & Ophoff, C. & Moens, D., 2022. "An overview of direct carbon fuel cells and their promising potential on coupling with solar thermochemical carbon production," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    10. Bumann, A.A. & Papadokonstantakis, S. & Sugiyama, H. & Fischer, U. & Hungerbühler, K., 2010. "Evaluation and analysis of a proxy indicator for the estimation of gate-to-gate energy consumption in the early process design phases: The case of organic solvent production," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(6), pages 2407-2418.
    11. Behroozeh, Samira & Hayati, Dariush & Karami, Ezatollah, 2022. "Determining and validating criteria to measure energy consumption sustainability in agricultural greenhouses," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    12. Ding, Haoran & Tong, Sirui & Qi, Zhifu & Liu, Fei & Sun, Shien & Han, Long, 2023. "Syngas production from chemical-looping steam methane reforming: The effect of channel geometry on BaCoO3/CeO2 monolithic oxygen carriers," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 263(PE).
    13. Tang, Yuanyou & Wang, Yang & Long, Wuqiang & Xiao, Ge & Wang, Yongjian & Li, Weixing, 2023. "Analysis and enhancement of methanol reformer performance for online reforming based on waste heat recovery of methanol-diesel dual direct injection engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 283(C).
    14. Dutta, Rohan & Ghosh, Parthasarathi & Chowdhury, Kanchan, 2011. "Customization and validation of a commercial process simulator for dynamic simulation of Helium liquefier," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 3204-3214.
    15. Rocío Maceiras & Víctor Alfonsín & Luis Seguí & Juan F. González, 2021. "Microwave Assisted Alkaline Pretreatment of Algae Waste in the Production of Cellulosic Bioethanol," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-10, September.
    16. Wang, Chao & Liao, Mingzheng & Jiang, Zhiqiang & Liang, Bo & Weng, Jiahong & Song, Qingbin & Zhao, Ming & Chen, Ying & Lei, Libin, 2022. "Sorption-enhanced propane partial oxidation hydrogen production for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) applications," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    17. Xiao Li & Lingzhi Yang & Yong Hao, 2023. "Absorption-Enhanced Methanol Steam Reforming for Low-Temperature Hydrogen Production with Carbon Capture," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(20), pages 1-16, October.
    18. Zhang, Peiye & Liu, Ming & Mu, Ruiqi & Yan, Junjie, 2024. "Exergy-based control strategy design and dynamic performance enhancement for parabolic trough solar receiver-reactor of methanol decomposition reaction," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    19. Cheng, Wen-Long & Liu, Jian & Nian, Yong-Le & Wang, Chang-Long, 2016. "Enhancing geothermal power generation from abandoned oil wells with thermal reservoirs," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 537-545.
    20. Ridoan Karim & Mohammad Ershadul Karim & Firdaus Muhammad-Sukki & Siti Hawa Abu-Bakar & Nurul Aini Bani & Abu Bakar Munir & Ahmed Imran Kabir & Jorge Alfredo Ardila-Rey & Abdullahi Abubakar Mas’ud, 2018. "Nuclear Energy Development in Bangladesh: A Study of Opportunities and Challenges," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-15, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:260:y:2022:i:c:s0360544222018424. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.