Talk:Steam reforming

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I changed the term "nine megatons" to "nine million tons" because of the possiblity that an indivudual not knowlagable in the field, would confuse megatons with its more common assoscition: nuclear weapons yield.

Contents

[edit] Efficiency

I removed the follwing (by Don27) from the article, as it is an opinon rather than a statement of fact:

The thermodynamic efficiency is more like 30%, not 70% - 85% as stated. The higher value probably does not take the energy of the steam used, the endothermic heat of reaction and the separation and treatment of the products. Also you have to notice that the CO produced in the first reaction contains a big part of the energy of the output: 1 mol of hydrogen contains 68kcal, 1 mol of CO 67kcal.

I belive that the figure of 70-85% is more or less correct. If someone could cite a reliable source on the efficiency of industrial steam reforming, that would help this article a lot. --PeR 14:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

70%-85% can be considered correct because the energy used to produce steam can be recovered and used in the process. The endothermic heat of reaction lowers the efficiency only slightly, and purification energy costs are negligible. Also, the DOE has issued grants requiring LHV efficiencies of 75%. Compression of the hydrogen can require greater amounts of energy, but that is out of the scope of this entry.

[edit] Actual projects

I noticed 2006 on the Hannover Fair projects with small size steam reforming systems for commercial products available around 2010.

A unit suitable for heating and warm water in one family houses using natural gas

An APU for deep freeze trucks using Diesel to deliver 4 kW electric power to operate the cooling system while parked

[edit] Completely ignores ethylene and other olefin production by steam cracking as well as hydrogen produced for synthesis of ammonia by steam reforming!

In the year 2003, there was 97,000,000 metric tons of ethylene (used in producing polyethylene and a host of other petrochemical chemicals) produced worldwide by the steam cracking of various hydrocarbons (ethane, methane, naphtha, etc.). See [2]. That absolutely dwarfs the production of hydrogen by steam reforming. Why is the ethylene production not even mentioned in this article?

And how about the 109,000,000 metric tons of ammonia produced worldwide in 2004, the synthesis of which starts with producing hydrogen via steam reforming? See [3] and also Ammonia. Why is that also not mentioned? mbeychok 23:48, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, people tend to write about things that interest them. Hydrogen (as an alternative fuel) is a hot topic among certain environmentalists, hence the subject gets covered. (Note that more than half the article is written from a fuel cell perspective even though only a tiny fraction of the worlds hydrogen production ever gets near a fuel cell). I agree that the article as it is now should probably be named "Hydrogen production via steam reforming" and a new article should be written about steam reforming in general. However, that requires that someone has both the time and the knowledge to do so. --PeR 09:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
PeR: Yes, I had noticed that the article was more about fuel cells than steam reforming. It is hard not to notice that. One of these days, when I finish the articles I'm working on now, I will write an article about steam reforming. However, for now, I may at least work the above statistics into this article.
The key problem is that someone read a single article in a physics magazine (the only reference in the article) and thought that it made him/her an instant expert. Too many young Wikipedians think that all one needs to write any article on any subject is to read a few reference articles. There is too much of that attitude in Wikipedia by people still in university with no real world experience. Oh well, enough ranting for one day! - mbeychok 16:46, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge of Methane reformer into this article

As per the discussion on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Methane reformer (car) the little extra info found in the article Methane reformer should probably be incorporated into this article. --Tunheim 19:49, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

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