Biogas conversion to green hydrogen by catalytic sorption enhanced steam reforming (SESR): The feasibility study

Abstract

Clean energy technologies will play a decisive role in power generation and energy mix short-term scenarios to mitigate the environmental problems derived from increasing global energy consumption. In this context, green hydrogen will foreseeably become a clean and environmentally friendly energy carrier for sustainable development. Biogas is a valuable source of renewable energy and a secondary energy carrier produced from biodegradable organic materials via anaerobic digestion. It is mainly composed of CH4 (35-75 vol.%) and CO2 (15-55 vol.%). The present work proposes utilizing biogas for green hydrogen production by the sorption enhanced steam reforming (SESR) process. SESR has recently emerged as a novel promising method to improve hydrogen production efficiency. It combines, in a single unit, hydrogen production and carbon dioxide separation by a solid CO2 acceptor. The objective of the present work is to prove the feasibility of the SESR of biogas to produce high-purity and highyield hydrogen. To this aim, a comprehensive assessment of the process was carried out by evaluating the effect of the operating conditions on biogas SESR to optimize hydrogen production