Identification

Title

UKCCSRC Call 2 Project: Novel Materials and Reforming Processing Route for the Production of Ready-Separated CO2/N2/H2 from Natural Gas Feedstocks

Abstract

The world's population is predicted to grow from the current 7 billions to a plateau of approximately 9.2 billions to be reached within the next 60 years, representing roughly a 30 % increase in a not so distant future. The need for more energy efficient methods of producing synthetic fertilisers to meet the resulting increases in food demand and in crude (and bio) oils refining operations -on crudes of ever poorer quality- motivates the scientific community to reconsider the limitations of the mature technologies of synthetic fertilisers production and hydro-refining processes (HDS, HDN, HDM, HDO, hydrocracking) which both rely on the supply of hydrogen. Synthetic fertilisers necessitate hydrogen and nitrogen as feedstocks to make ammonia, which represents the building block for other fertilisers such as urea or ammonium nitrate. The current cheapest and most common means of producing hydrogen is natural gas steam reforming. With an abundance of natural gas reserves becoming exploitable worldwide in recent years via the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas, and given the ever more severe regulations on atmospheric pollution caused by flaring of associated gas from refineries and oil extraction operations, the production of hydrogen is very likely to remain dominated in the years to come by the process of steam reforming using natural gas as its feedstock (aka 'steam methane reforming' or 'SMR'). Conventional SMR technology usually features many unit operations (desulphurisation, pre-reforming, primary reforming, furnace, high and low temperature water gas shift (HT-WGS, LT-WGS), and final separation, with as many heat integration steps in between the units in order to reach an energy efficiency of roughly 80%. This efficiency is only attainable thanks to economies of scale, and SMR plants are consequently enormous. To avoid storage and transport costs of H2, the ammonia/ammonium nitrate/urea plants, or refinery operations are usually conducted near the site of SMR, therefore the production of the final products of fertilisers or clean fuels is very centralised, and thus vulnerable, as well as incurring large distribution costs. With sources of natural gas becoming more remote, widely distributed, shorter lived and quickly relocated, the process of converting natural gas to the final products fertiliser/clean fuel should become more mobile, down-scaleable, as fracking gas wells see their production decay with time and move to different sites. This proposal seeks to reduce significantly the energy and materials demand for the conversion of natural gas feedstocks into ready separated streams of the H2, N2 and CO2 products of steam reforming (the building blocks of urea production) by coupling the in-situ high temperature CO2 capture during the reforming reactions on a solid sorbent (a process called 'sorption enhancement') with the process of chemical looping steam reforming. A process is proposed with only two reactors, a reformer and a pressure/temperature swing separator, appropriate for the new, mobile, small scale industrial utilisation of natural gas, through realising the multiple synergies that are unique to the coupled process, and through the avoidance of expensive materials and awkward reformer geometries. Grant number: UKCCSRC-C2-181.

Resource type

nonGeographicDataset

Resource locator

https://www.bgs.ac.uk/ukccs/accessions/projects.html

function: information

Unique resource identifier

code

http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13606681

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

originating controlled vocabulary

title

GEMET - INSPIRE themes

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2008-06-01

Keyword set

keyword value

Carbon capture and storage

originating controlled vocabulary

title

BGS Thesaurus of Geosciences

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2011

Keyword set

keyword value

NERC_DDC

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

2014-09

End position

2016-08

Dataset reference date

date type

creation

effective date

2014-09

Frequency of update

notApplicable

Quality and validity

Lineage

UKCCSRC Call 2 project, grant number: UKCCSRC-C2-181, Lead institution: University of Leeds

Conformity

Conformity report

specification

title

INSPIRE Implementing rules laying down technical arrangements for the interoperability and harmonisation of Geology

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2011

degree

false

explanation

See the referenced specification

Conformity report

specification

title

Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2010-12-08

degree

false

explanation

See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:323:0011:0102:EN:PDF

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Limitations on public access

Constraint set

Limitations on public access

The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

organisation name

University of Leeds

email address

not available

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Responsible party

organisation name

University of Leeds

email address

not available

responsible party role

principalInvestigator

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

organisation name

British Geological Survey

full postal address

The Lyell Centre, Research Avenue South

EDINBURGH

EH14 4AP

United Kingdom

telephone number

+44 131 667 1000

email address

enquiries@bgs.ac.uk

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2021-02-10

Metadata language

eng