Isreali chemists discuss a system for solar powered methane reformers.

[NNadir]

The sun is an enormous source of energy; in one year, the amount of solar energy incident on the earth is about 15 000 times the world’s energy use. However, because the solar energy intensity is low, the challenge is to find an efficient way of converting the solar radiation into an energy form that one can readily utilize. One promising concept is using the concentrated solar energy to upgrade fuels such as methane into an energy rich synthesis gas (a mixture of hydrogen and CO called syngas), which has been commonly used in industry, for example, for hydrogen production. Syngas can be burned in a conventional gas turbine to produce electricity. It can also be employed as a starting material for a variety of chemical products, from ammonia and its fertilizer derivations to methanol and different types of alcohols, acids, and other chemicals.
The solar process for making syngas (solar reforming) is a catalytic reaction between methane and steam (or carbon dioxide) which takes place in the solar reactor. Steam reforming of methane is a highly endothermic reaction accompanied mainly by the side reaction of the water-gas shift (WGS), which is slightly exothermic...

...Solar reforming can upgrade fossil fuels by 20-30% with respect to their calorific values.2 The upgraded fuel can then be combusted in a gas turbine, thus introducing a solar contribution, known as solar gain, which can be defined as follows:

(Solar Gain ) = (Heat of Combustion of Products - Heat of Combustion of Feed)/Heat of Combustion of Feed

This is an interesting concept. I think it is potentially of more synthetic interest than for real energy interest for the long term.

Methane, of course, is the main constituent in the very dangerous and dirty fuel natural gas, natural gas playing a huge role in global climate change.

The abstract of the article from Energy and Fuels can be found here: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/asap.cgi/enfuem/asap/pdf/ef0501997.pdf

[Coastie for Truth]

1. Is this the same paper?

A New Catalyst System for High-Temperature Solar Reforming of Methane

[NNadir]

2. Yes, it is. n/t.

[Coastie for Truth]

3. Thanks

I don't access to Chem Abs at home (too cheap)

[NNadir]

4. You can search the ACS website for free, under publications.

http://pubs.acs.org/wls/journals/query/subscriberSearch.html

If you find an article of interest, you can click on the abstract. You need to subscribe for access to the full articles, as I'm sure you know.

If you search on archival articles, in many cases you can see the first page for free.

My personal feeling is that the international community could do a great service to the future (in these dire times) by subsidizing the world's scientific literature and making it all freely available on the internet. I suspect I have very naive in hoping for such a thing.

I'm a electronic subscriber to Energy and Fuels which is a cheap and fun journal. I cancelled all of my paper journal subscriptions years ago