An overview of solar thermal cracking of natural gas : challenges and solutions towards commercialization

Abstract

Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Mauritius, 11-13 July, 2011.

Solar thermal cracking of natural gas has great potential to become an attractive alternative process for hydrogen and carbon black production due to its zero emission footprint. However, there are two major problems preventing this process from commercialization: (1) carbon deposition causing reactor clogging, (2) intrinsic losses in energy conversion efficiency as a result of re-radiation losses and inherently transient nature of the solar energy. The second problem in particular applies to all types of solar reactors despite the reactants and products because temperature has the most important impact on reactant to product conversion efficiency. This paper provides a detailed description of these two problems, and summarizes few solutions addressing these challenges.