Dry reforming of methane cannot be used to produce hydrogen

摘要

Hydrogen is used commercially in high volumes for the syntheses of ammonia and methanol, for the refining of petroleum and for the production of many petrochemicals. The major industrial source of hydrogen is methane steam reforming (SR) reaction (1,2,3,4,5,6). In recent years the carbon dioxide or dry reforming (DR) (7,8,9,10,11,12) reaction has been studied as an alternative, because it provides the possibility of consuming carbon dioxide, which is the most abundant greenhouse gas. Unfortunately, as will be shown here, dry reforming (reaction 1) does not occur by itself, and is associated with the reverse water gas shift (RWGS) (reaction 2), which uses up the hydrogen that is produced in the reaction to form water.