Novel Ways for Hydrogen Production Based on Methane Steam and Dry Reforming Integrated with Carbon Capture

The combination of methane steam reforming technology and CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) technology has great potential to reduce carbon emissions in the process of hydrogen production. Different from the traditional idea of capturing CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) in the exhaust gas with high work consumption, this study simultaneously focuses on CO2 separation from fuel gas and recycling. A new hydrogen production system is developed by methane steam reforming coupled with carbon capture. Separated and captured high-purity carbon dioxide could be recycled for methane dry reforming; on this basis, a new methane-dry-reforming-driven hydrogen production system with a carbon dioxide reinjection unit is innovatively proposed. In this study, the energy flow and irreversible loss in the two newly developed systems are analyzed in detail through energy and exergy balance analysis. The advantages are explored from the perspective of hydrogen production rate, natural gas consumption and work consumption. In addition, in consideration of the integrated performance, an optimal design analysis was conducted. In terms of hydrogen production, the new system based on dry reforming is better, with an advantage of 2.41%; however, it is worth noting that the comprehensive thermal performance of the new steam reforming system is better, reaching 10.95%. This study provides new ideas for hydrogen production from a low carbon emission perspective and also offers a new direction for future distributed energy system integration.