Investigation of Dry Reforming of Methane in a Dielectric Barrier Discharge Reactor

Low temperature conversion of CH4 and CO2 was investigated in a coaxial dielectric barrier discharge reactor at ambient pressure. Main parameters, including the input power, the residence time, the discharge gap, the molar ratio of the feed gases and the multi-stage ionization design were evaluated to understand the ways to improve the conversion of greenhouse gases and reduce the output of by-products. At certain input power, the conversion of CH4 and CO2 can reach 0.797 and 0.527, respectively, when the molar ratio of CH4/CO2 is one. When this ratio was low to 1:5, the conversion of CH4 was promoted to 0.843 and the selectivity to CO and H-2 was almost 100%. The multi-stage ionization favored the conversion of CO2, which would also be an efficient design to promote the selectivity to the main products such as CO and H-2 and suppress the selectivity to the by-products.