Conventional Industrial Steam Reforming

While steam reforming of methane is suppressed at high pressure and is a reversible reaction, this is not so for other fuels. Thus methane steam reforming at pressures of 10-20 bar (1 bar = 10 Pa) suffers from low methane conversion due to the thermodynamic equilibrium [48]. Such high pressure is required, for example, if the reforming process is combined with membrane separation using conventional palladium membranes (see Section 5.2.4). Industrial steam reformers work with... 

Steam reforming is a heterogeneously catalyzed process, with nickel catalyst deposited throughout a preformed porous support. It is empirically observed in the industry, that conversion is proportional to the geometric surface area of the catalyst particles, rather than the internal pore area. This suggests that the particle behaves as an egg-shell type, as if all the catalytic activity were confined to a thin layer at the external surface. It has been demonstrated by conventional reaction-diffusion particle modelling that this behaviour is due to... 

The process is known as the conventional method of producing hydrogen for meeting the hydrogen demands of the refining and petrochemical industry. The most widely used fuel in steam reforming is natural gas, which is mostly composed of methane ... 

The conversion of natural gas to methanol via syngas is a widely used industrial process. A typical conventional process includes desulfurization of natural gas, steam reforming, methanol synthesis and purification by distillation. Steam reforming of natural is an endothermic reaction and operates at high temperatures (reformed gas effluent at about 800880°C). Methanol synthesis from syn is an exothermic reaction and operates at 200300°C. Heat integration and recovery is an important feature of the process. The trend in methanol production has been toward larger capacity and improved energy efficiency. 

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