Carbon dioxide reforming of methane at near room temperature in low energy pulsed plasma

Abstract The reforming of methane by carbon dioxide was studied in a pulsed plasma reactor. The products mainly consisted of syngas and C 2 hydrocarbons. Compared to the previous similar works, the electrical pulse energy injected into the reactor was much lower, 5–8 mJ, while the frequency was increased up to 5 kHz. At these low energy densities, the chemical energy efficiency was appreciably improved. The latter was higher than 30% throughout the experiments while reached the maximum of about 55% at the reactants ratio CO 2 /CH 4  = 3. Although, the reactor temperature was typically 70 °C, the hydrogen production efficiency of at least 50% was achieved. The better performance at lower energy densities is attributed to the fast saturation of the molecular dissociation rate by the excitation level or equivalently by the pulse energy.