The panorama of plasma-assisted non-oxidative methane reforming

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. Methane is an important raw material for fuel and commodity chemicals production. Energy-intensive steam methane catalytic reforming in gas-fired furnaces is the main industrial process for methane conversion to synthesis gas and further to other chemicals. Methane conversion by means of non-thermal plasma technologies has attracted attention in the last years, as no pre-heating of the feed-stream at high temperatures is needed. Electric energy is consumed in producing energetic electrons for molecule bonds breaking, instead of gas heating, thereby overcoming the disadvantages of high operational temperatures. In this work, after introducing plasma classification and plasma chemistry, a comprehensive review of literature papers on non-thermal plasma-assisted methane coupling in the period 2010–2016 is presented and the best results that have been obtained with all different kinds of non-thermal plasma techniques are reported. Finally, as the energy cost is the main cost driver of the process after the raw material cost, comparison among all plasma techniques used for methane coupling is performed in terms of specific energy requirement to crack a mole of methane (SER, kJ/mol CH4 ), efficiency (η %) and energy requirement to produce a mole of target product (ER, either kJ/mol C2H2 or kJ/mol C2H4 ). This is followed by a comparison between plasma-driven and thermal energy-driven methane coupling.status: publishe