Recent Development of CO2 Reforming of CH4 by Arc Plasma

This paper presents a brief overview of CO2 reforming of CH4 (CRM) by various forms of arc plasma, which is more suitable to CRM, and the energy efficiency is used to evaluate different plasma processes specifically. According to the reported results, the arc thermal plasma with binode exhibited better performance. Moreover, the plasma CRM process was compared with the reported plasma steam reforming of CH4 (SRM) process, and the results showed that the former process has advantages on energy efficiency and CH4 consumption. Additionally, it is believed that the plasma CRM process would be competitive with the conventional SRM process in both energy efficiency and CO2 emission once the heat management is emphasized and the renewable power is used. Finally, a concept of plasma reactor for industrial application is proposed.