Abstract
The need for cost-competitive and climate-neutral hydrogen production is becoming increasingly urgent in order to foster a global clean energy transition. Plasma methane pyrolysis for high performance hydrogen and carbon powder production, without direct CO2 emission, is a green and smart solution. At the present state of the art, the understanding of the kinetics of conversion of methane to carbon, hydrogen, and by-products is limited by two aspects: the comprehension of the physics and chemistry of the plasma discharge and that of the successive nucleation and growth of carbonaceous particles. In order to improve the process performances, thus making this process an important contributor to the portfolio of technologies that can be used to foster the transition to a hydrogen-based economy, it is necessary to increase our knowledge of these aspects well beyond the state of the art. In this framework, the specific objectives of the SMART_H2 project are the following:
- to develop a concentrated parameter model of the plasma process that is able to relate the power absorbed by the discharge, as well as the main operative parameters, such as pressure and composition of the inlet feed, to the chemical evolution within the plasma volume. The model will be developed to describe the chemistry and physics of the two most promising plasma technologies currently used to convert methane: arc and microwave discharges;
- to develop a one-dimensional model that is able to describe the kinetics active in the immediate stages that follow the plasma discharge, as well as in the successive part of the plasma reactor. The kinetic model will be composed of a part describing the elementary reactions active during methane pyrolysis in the investigated conditions, while carbon nucleation will be modeled using the discrete sectional method;
- to develop and apply a strategy to determine from first principles the rate constants that are necessary to describe the formation of polycyclic aromatic molecules in the aftermath of the plasma discharge and in the following cooling down stage as well as the contextual nucleation and growth of carbon powders.
Scientific coordinator for the Department
Prof. Cristina Puzzarini
Partnership
Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna (Italy)
Politecnico di Milano (Italy)