(45b) Non-Catalytic, Partial Oxidation for Syngas Production

Although hydrogen is abundant in nature, it is primarily bound into other molecules such as hydrocarbons. The conversion, or reforming, of a hydrocarbon into a hydrogen-rich syngas may be accomplished through either catalytic or non-catalytic processes. We investigated non-catalytic syngas production with two different reactors: a reactor consisting of multiple parallel channels with alternating flow directions and a reactor consisting of porous inert media. In both devices, heat transfer from the hot products to the cold reactants promotes reactions of fuel-rich, syngas-producing mixtures that lie beyond the conventional flammability limit. For the parallel channel reactor, experimental results with methane/air and propane/air mixtures show that stable reaction fronts are obtained at a wide range of equivalence ratios and inlet velocities. A comparison of the reactor performance for methane/air and propane/air mixtures shows significant differences, which are attributed to the more complex reaction chemistry of rich propane combustion. With the porous media reactor, we investigated syngas production from wet ethanol, which is ethanol that has not been fully distilled or dehydrated. Ethanol is often promoted as the biofuel of the future, yet it is hindered by its overall production energy requirements, the most significant of which is water removal through distillation and dehydration. Through experiments and modeling, we studied the reforming of wet ethanol over a range of equivalence ratios, inlet velocities, and wet ethanol water fractions. Experimental results, which include species concentrations in the exhaust and gas temperatures, showed that syngas can produced as efficiently with wet ethanol as with dry ethanol. Computational results included gas and porous media temperatures, reaction front propagation speeds, and spatial and temporal species production and destruction. We also include experimental and modeling results from our previous investigations of methane and heptane fuel reforming with a porous media reactor.