Simulation of Synthesis Gas Production by Using a Plasma Reactor

Abstract

There are multiple methods for producing synthesis gas and one of the most important of these methods is dry reforming in which two preparations of carbon dioxide and methane are converted into synthesis gas. Carbon dioxide as one of the destructive environmental factors and methane as the main component of natural gas exist in copious amounts in the world, especially in Iran, which has the second largest gas resources of the world after Russia. Therefore, the importance of this method is in converting pollutants into an intermediate substance known as synthesis gas which has considerable applications. In this study, first, synthesis gas production by using dry reforming with the use of plasma technology is studied and for this purpose, glow electric discharge plasma at atmospheric pressure with DC power supply was used. Feed flow rate and the distance between the electrodes were studied as the parameters. In addition, voltage effect on optimal conditions was studied as well. Next, by using fluent software, dynamic simulation of computational fluid of this system was performed which gives us velocity and pressure distributions in the system. For optimization of laboratory conditions, it was assumed that our system has two incoming paths instead of one and the results obtained from this assumption showed that this assumption increases the residence time of the material between the two electrodes which in turn increases the percentage of conversion.