Abstract
Nomenclature
1- Introduction
2- Experimental section
3- Result and discussion
4- Conclusions
Acknowledgement
References
Abstract
The chemical looping process on honeycomb reactor for solar syngas is experimentally studied in this work, which is the key reaction of the liquid sunshine production process. The honeycomb reactor realizes the integration of oxygen carrier and reaction chamber. NiO is placed in the reactor as oxygen carrier and methane is introduced as fuel gas. The results show that, with the development of process, the major reaction in the reactor gradually changed from methane complete oxidation to methane partial oxidation. During the process, the methane conversion and outlet syngas concentration is affected by the methane flow and fractional oxidation. Under the optimal operating conditions, the methane conversion can be maintained more than 95% and the concentration of outlet syngas can be around 90%. Compared with non-honeycomb fixed bed reactor, the methane conversion increases by more than 20 percent point and the concentration of outlet syngas increases by about 10 percent point. In addition, oxygen carrier in honeycomb reactor shows excellent cyclic stability in 30 times experiments.
Introduction
When the consequences of the overuse of fossil fuels come, are we prepared to deal with them? Since the first industrial revolution, fossil fuels have been the primary source of global energy. Behind the exponential progress powered by fossil fuels are the potential of energy crisis and the environmental deterioration [1,2]. Nowadays, annual carbon dioxide emissions are about twice as much as that can be absorbed by nature [3]. If we continue to rely on fossil fuels, the resulting climate change and air pollution will threaten our life [4]. Sunlight is the most abundant source of energy on earth, and it can provide about 885 million TWh of energy in a year, surpassing other kinds of renewable energy by hundreds of times [5]. But it is hard to use it as easily as you flip a switch due to the decentralization and discontinuity of solar [6]. If we want to capture, store sunlight and supply it as energy source, the key process is to convert it into a stable, storable, highenergy-density chemical fuel.
The liquid sunshine vision is increasingly appealing to researchers [7]. Liquid fuels are not difficult to transport and store, and it can be widely used with some improvements to existing infrastructures. Liquid sunlight is designed to convert sunlight into liquid fuels such as methanol. Methanol is an attractive candidate because of its wide application. There are no C-C bonds in methanol which can effectively reduce the greenhouse gas emission due to its low carbon to hydrogen ratio [7]. As the raw material of methanol production, the preparation of solar syngas is a key process in current researches [8–۱۱].