UKCCSRC Call 2 Project: Novel Materials and Reforming Processing Route for the Production of Ready-Separated CO2/N2/H2 from Natural Gas Feedstocks

The world's population is predicted to grow from the current 7 billions to a plateau of approximately 9.2 billions to be reached within the next 60 years, representing roughly a 30 % increase in a not so distant future. The need for more energy efficient methods of producing synthetic fertilisers to meet the resulting increases in food demand and in crude (and bio) oils refining operations -on crudes of ever poorer quality- motivates the scientific community to reconsider the limitations of the mature technologies of synthetic fertilisers production and hydro-refining processes (HDS, HDN, HDM, HDO, hydrocracking) which both rely on the supply of hydrogen. Synthetic fertilisers necessitate hydrogen and nitrogen as feedstocks to make ammonia, which represents the building block for other fertilisers such as urea or ammonium nitrate. The current cheapest and most common means of producing hydrogen is natural gas steam reforming. With an abundance of natural gas reserves becoming exploitable worldwide in recent years via the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas, and given the ever more severe regulations on atmospheric pollution caused by flaring of associated gas from refineries and oil extraction operations, the production of hydrogen is very likely to remain dominated in the years to come by the process of steam reforming using natural gas as its feedstock (aka 'steam methane reforming' or 'SMR'). Conventional SMR technology usually features many unit operations (desulphurisation, pre-reforming, primary reforming, furnace, high and low temperature water gas shift (HT-WGS, LT-WGS), and final separation, with as many heat integration steps in between the units in order to reach an energy efficiency of roughly 80%. This efficiency is only attainable thanks to economies of scale, and SMR plants are consequently enormous. To avoid storage and transport costs of H2, the ammonia/ammonium nitrate/urea plants, or refinery operations are usually conducted near the site of SMR, therefore the production of the final products of fertilisers or clean fuels is very centralised, and thus vulnerable, as well as incurring large distribution costs. With sources of natural gas becoming more remote, widely distributed, shorter lived and quickly relocated, the process of converting natural gas to the final products fertiliser/clean fuel should become more mobile, down-scaleable, as fracking gas wells see their production decay with time and move to different sites. This proposal seeks to reduce significantly the energy and materials demand for the conversion of natural gas feedstocks into ready separated streams of the H2, N2 and CO2 products of steam reforming (the building blocks of urea production) by coupling the in-situ high temperature CO2 capture during the reforming reactions on a solid sorbent (a process called 'sorption enhancement') with the process of chemical looping steam reforming. A process is proposed with only two reactors, a reformer and a pressure/temperature swing separator, appropriate for the new, mobile, small scale industrial utilisation of natural gas, through realising the multiple synergies that are unique to the coupled process, and through the avoidance of expensive materials and awkward reformer geometries. Grant number: UKCCSRC-C2-181.

Date (Creation): 2014-09

Citation identifier: http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13606681

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
University of Leeds	Valerie Dupont	not available	Point of contact
University of Leeds	Valerie Dupont	not available	Principal investigator

Maintenance and update frequency: notApplicable

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Geology

BGS Thesaurus of Geosciences

NGDC Deposited Data
UKCCS
Carbon capture and storage

dataCentre

Keywords

NERC_DDC

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Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.

Other constraints: Either: (i) the dataset is made freely available, e.g. via the Internet, for a restricted category of use (e.g. educational use only); or (ii) the dataset has not been formally approved by BGS for access and use by external clients under licence, but its use may be permitted under alternative formal arrangements; or (iii) the dataset contains 3rd party data or information obtained by BGS under terms and conditions that must be consulted in order to determine the permitted usage of the dataset. Refer to the BGS staff member responsible for the creation of the dataset if further advice is required. He / she should be familiar with the composition of the dataset, particularly with regard to 3rd party IPR contained in it, and any resultant use restrictions. This staff member should revert to the IPR Section ( ipr@bgs.ac.uk) for advice, should the position not be clear.

Language: English

Topic category

Geoscientific information

Begin date: 2014-09 After

End date: 2016-08 Before

Reference System Information

No information provided.

Distribution format

Name	Version

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://www.bgs.ac.uk/ukccs/accessions/projects.html

Hierarchy level: Non geographic dataset

Other: non geographic dataset

Conformance result

Title: INSPIRE Implementing rules laying down technical arrangements for the interoperability and harmonisation of Geology

Date (Publication): 2011

Explanation: See the referenced specification

Pass: No

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services