Design and Operations of a 15 kWth Sub-pilot Unit for the Methane-to-Syngas Chemical Looping Process with CO2 Utilization

The methane to syngas (MTS) chemical looping process is an advanced methane reforming technology for the production of high purity syngas. The developed MTS process utilizes metal oxide oxygen carriers in a co-current moving bed reactor to partially oxidize the methane such that resulting syngas stream is undiluted by nitrogen in air or H2 from over conversion and directly suitable for downstream processing. The oxygen carriers are regenerated with air in a separate fluidized bed reactor producing a spent air stream separate from the product syngas, circumventing the need for cryogenic air separation units. In this work, a 15 kWth sub-pilot unit is designed and operated in a continuous manner to experimentally confirm the viability of the MTS process. Reactor design considerations and methodology are discussed in detail. An iron-titanium composite oxygen carrier is used as the oxygen carrier for its ability to achieve high methane conversion while regulating the product syngas to the partial oxidation pro...