Methane conversion on thermally and kinetically nonequilibruim systems

摘要

Hydrogen is one of the most important components of many chemical and physical processes vital for various industries. Modern hydrogen generation is mainly based on steam catalytic conversion of methane and is combined, as a rule, with production of ammonia - major hydrogen-consuming product in all developed countries. Such production is cost-efficient only at large-scale production exceeding thousands of cubic meters per hour. At the same time latest developments in chemical current supplies as well as the needs of such industries as microelectronics, food industry and small-scale chemical production raised a problem of developing compact and efficient hydrogen generators with the capacity up to 100 m{sup}3/hr. As one of the methods to solve this problem, the present article proposes to carry out methane-to-hydrogen conversion under nonequilibrium conditions when the energy of internal freedom of reacting molecules greatly exceeds the average energy of their thermal motion (kinetically nonequilibrium systems) or when during conversion there is an intensive heat exchange between the reactants and conversion products (thermally nonequilibrium systems).