• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.58-63
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• 2007

In recent years, the technologies for the production of synthetic fuel from natural gas have been attracting considerable interest because of high oil prices. While oil prices remaining high, GTL (Gas-to-Liquids) technology would provide an attractive option for utilizing gas resources. Furthermore, GTL fuels contain almost zero sulfur and low aromatics and have a very high cetane so that they are estimated to be environmentally friendly diesel fuels able of meeting the advanced fuel specifications of the 21st century. GTL process generally consists of three primary steps: synthesis gas production from natural gas reforming, hydrocarbon production from synthesis gas by Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) synthesis, product upgrading by hydrocracking/hydroisomerization. This paper presents a brief summary of GTL technology and worldwide development trend about it focusing on the reforming of natural gas and the F-T synthesis.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.720-722
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• 2009

This work is mainly focused at developing the hydrogen production unit with the capacity of 20 $Nm^3/h$ of high purity hydrogen. At present steam reforming of natural gas is the preferable method to produce hydrogen at the point of production cost. The developed hydrogen production unit composed of natural gas reformer and pressure swing adsorption system. To improve the thermal efficiency of steam reforming reactor, the internal heat recuperating structure was adopted. The heat contained in reformed gas which comes out of the catalytic beds recovered by reaction feed stream. These features of design reduce the fuel consumption into burner and the heat duty of external heat exchangers, such as feed pre-heater and steam generator. The production rate of natural gas reformer was 41.7 $Nm^3/h$ as a dryreformate basis. The composition of PSA feed gas was $H_2$ 78.26%, $CO_2$ 18.49%, CO 1.43% and $CH_4$ 1.85%. The integrated production unit can produce 21.1 $Nm^3/h$ of high-purity hydrogen (99.997%). The hydrogen production efficiency of the developed unit was more than 58% as an LHV basis.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.12-25
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• 2007

Numerical simulation of the natural gas steam reforming process for on-site hydrogen production in a $H_2$ fueling station was conducted on the basis of process material and heat balances. The effects of reforming parameters on the process efficiency of hydrogen production were investigated, and set-point values of each of the parameters to minimize the sizes of unit process equipments and to secure a stable operability of the reforming process were suggested. S/C ratio of the reforming reactants was found to be a crucial parameter in the reforming process mostly governing both the hydrogen production efficiency and the stable operability of the process. The operation of the process was regarded to be stable if the feed water(WR) as a reforming reactant could evaporate completely to dry steam through HRSG. The optimum S/C ratio was 3.0 where the process efficiency of hydrogen production was maximized and the stable operability of the process was secured. The optimum feed rates of natural gas(NGR) and WR as reforming reactants and natural gas(NGB) as a burner fuel were also determined for the hydrogen production rate of $27\;Nm^3/h$.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.601-607
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• 2019

Ammonia would be formed in natural gas containing small amount of nitrogen reforming process in the process natural gas, which might damage the Pt catalyst and Prox catalyst. In the article, the effect of nitrogen contents on the formation of ammonia in the reforming process has been studied. In the experiments, Ru based and Ni based catalysts were used and the concentration of ammonia in the reformate gas at various gas hourly space velocity was measured. Experimental result shows that relatively higher ammonia concentration was measured with Ru based catalyst than with Ni based catalyst. It also shows that the concentration of ammonia increased rapidly after most of the methane converted into hydrogen. Based on the experimental results to reduce ammonia concentration it might be better to finish methane conversion at the exit position of the reforming reactor to minimize the contact time of catalyst and nitrogen with high concentration of hydrogen.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.375-381
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• 2013

Kinetics data were obtained for steam reforming of methane and natural gas over the commercial nickel catalyst. Variables for the steam reforming were the reaction temperature and partial pressure of reactants. Parameters for the Power law rate model and the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model were obtained from the kinetic data. As a result of the reforming reaction using pure methane as a reactant, the reaction rate could be determined by the Power law rate model as well as the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model. In the case of methane in natural gas, however, the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model is much more suitable than the Power law rate model in terms of explaining methane reforming reaction. This behavior can be attributed to the competitive adsorption of methane, ethane, propane and butane in natural gas over the same catalyst sites.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.464-480
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• 2007

There are several methods for the hydrogen production such as steam reforming of natural gas, photochemical method, biological method, electrolysis and thermochemical method, etc. These days it has been widely studied for the hydrogen production method having low hydrogen production cost and high efficiency. In this paper, patents in the hydrogen production by steam reforming of natural gas were gathered and analyzed. The search range was limited in the open patents of USA(US), European Union(EP), Japan(JP), and Korea(KR) from 1996 to 2006. Patents were gathered by using key-words searching and extracted by filtering criteria. The trends of the patents was analyzed by the years, countries, companies, and technologies.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.95-101
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• 2016

For a natural gas steam reforming, comparative studies of the performance in a conventional packed-bed reactor and a membrane reactor, a new conceptual reactor consisting of a reactor with series of hydrogen separation membranes, have been performed. Based on experimental kinetics reported by Xu and Froment, a process simulation model was developed with Aspen $HYSYS^{(R)}$, a commercial process simulator, and effects of various operating conditions like temperature, $H_2$ permeance, and Ar sweep gas flow rate on the performance in a membrane reactor were investigated in terms of reactant conversion and $H_2$ yield enhancement showing improved $H_2$ yield and methane conversion in a membrane reactor. In addition, a preliminary cost estimation focusing on natural gas consumption to supply heat required for the system was carried out and feasibility of possible cost savings in a membrane reactor was assessed with a cost saving of 10.94% in a membrane reactor.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.545-550
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• 2012

This work is for the design study of natural gas reformer (40 $m^3/hr$ over). We used experimental kinetic data from literature. After that, we set up theoretical model based on experimental reaction kinetic data. The shape of reactor is 1.7 m long and 200 mm dia. with cylinder geometry. Volume of reactor is 53.4 liter. Average flow velocity of gases in the reactor has been determined 0.272 m/sec and residence time is 9.26 sec. Reaction temperature is $850^{\circ}C$, with pressure 9.3 Bar. Used natural gas volume is about 9.21 $m^3/hr$. Produced hydrogen is 43.7 $m^3/hr$ with no change of pressure. Unreacted natural gas is 0.09 $m^3/hr$ and the amount of steam is 26.9 $m^3/hr$. Steam to $CH_4$ (s/c ratio) is 2.91. Reforming reaction take place from the reactor entrance to 120 cm region of cylinder type reactor. After the entrance of reacting gases to 120 cm region, the reaction reaches equilibrium which is close to products. This study can be applicable to design various reactors. Output data is in good agreements with the data in literatures1).

• Journal of the Korean Society of Combustion
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.36-39
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• 2015

The combustion characteristics of metal fiber burner fueled natural gas with tail gas produced from reforming process were analyzed on the point of flame stability and excess air conditions. Also, it was analyzed the effect of energy efficiency improvement due to decrease the fuel input in reforming system by using residue gases. As a results, it was confirmed that tail gas including hydrogen, CO and $CO_2$ could be directly injected without any change of air control system in natural gas burner and also energy efficiency was increased up to 30% maintained stable combustion.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.639-643
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• 2009

A reformer, which produces hydrogen from natural gas, plays a major role for producing quality hydrogen to fuel-cell system. In this paper, fuel processor is designed to deliver hydrogen(75%) from the reformer to 200W fuel-cell system, and the electrical output power of the fuel-cells is examined by being injected different hydrogen concentrations to the system. We verified that the output power characteristics of the fuel-cells with 75% reformed hydrogen was lower about 7% than the case of pure hydrogen supplied. The type of reformer in this experiment takes SMR(Steam methane reforming) process, and the temperature variation characteristics of reforming process by reactions are examined in operation.