Investigation of Hydrogen Production Using Chemical Looping Reforming

AbstractChemical looping reforming (CLR) is a relatively new method to produce hydrogen and is used to convert solid, liquid or gaseous fuels to energy. There are various advantages of this method such as inherent CO2 capture, minimal NOx emissions and the hydrogen production. In this process, there is no direct contact between the fuel and oxidizer. This method utilizes oxygen from the oxygen carrier which may be a metal oxide for combustion or for making hydrogen by reducing water. The idea is to split the combustion process into three separate sub-processes by employing three separate reactors: air reactor where the oxygen carrier is oxidized by air, fuel reactor where natural gas is oxidized to produce a stream of CO2and H2O and steam reactor where the steam is reduced to produce hydrogen. In this study, a thermodynamic model with iron oxides as oxygen carrier has been developed using Aspen Plus by employing conservation of mass and energy for all the components of the CLR system. The developed model was employed to investigate the effect of various operating parameters such as mass flow rates of air, fuel, steam and oxygen carrier (OC) on hydrogen production and key reactor temperatures. The results show that increase in steam and oxide flow rates decreases the H2 production whereas the increase in fuel flow rate increases the H2 production