Steam Methane Reforming (SMR)
Hydrogen production using steam methane reforming (SMR) is a two-step process. The first step is to inject water vapor at very high temperature (700 to 1000 Celsius degrees) with methane in a pressurized environment (3 to 25 bars), which is the SMR process. The reaction generates hydrogen (H2) and carbon monoxide (CO) :
The Water Gas Shift process is then used to extract hydrogen from syngas mix.
World production
Annual global hydrogen production is around 70 million tonnes of hydrogen and around 75% comes from natural gas reforming.^1 Syngas from natural gas is also used in liquefaction plants in the Gas to Liquid process (GtL).In Qatar, the second largest FT plant in the world converts natural gas to petroleum liquids at a rate of 140,000 barrels per day.Another plant in Qatar has a capacity of 34,000 barrels per day.^4
Datas
Economic and technical datas is taken from Keipi & al ^2, Diglio & al ^3.
^1: IEA 2022, The Future of Hydrogen, https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-hydrogen, License: CC BY 4.0. ^2: Tiina Keipi, Henrik Tolvanen, Jukka Konttinen,Economic analysis of hydrogen production by methane thermal decomposition: Comparison to competing technologies,Energy Conversion and Management,Volume 159,2018,Pages 264-273,ISSN 0196-8904 ^3: Diglio, G., Hanak, D.P., Bareschino, P., Mancusi, E., Pepe, F., Montagnaro, F. and Manovic, V., 2017. Techno-economic analysis of sorption-enhanced steam methane reforming in a fixed bed reactor network integrated with fuel cell. Journal of Power Sources, 364, pp.41-51.