Is dry reforming the solution to reduce natural gas carbon footprint?

Abstract

With the increasing world’s energy demand along with the constantly expanding field of natural gas exploitation around the world, dry reforming of methane has gained increasing attention. Through this technology, natural gas can be converted into syngas, which is a well-known building block used for the production of alcohols and fuels. This technology has become an interesting approach for the valorization of a variety of CO2 streams and for the reduction of the natural gas carbon footprint. In this work, attention will be given to the different reforming technologies used at industrial scale, followed by an investigation of the different approaches used for dry reforming of methane. Furthermore, focus will be given on how natural gas reforming could be used as a vehicle to store renewable energy while trying as well to reduce the carbon footprint of this technology. The technology presented in this work was previously developed by Hydro Québec and uses a cheap and available catalyst in addition to electricity to convert methane and carbon dioxide into syngas. Reactants conversions were up to 99% and the syngas produced had a H2/CO ratio of 1 for over 200h.