Study on Pressurized Steam Reforming Reactions of Cokes Oven Gas in Steel Industry

The steel industry has tried to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through various processes. In particular, the method of reusing by-product of ironmaking process has been used as a method of decreasing carbon dioxide emissions and increasing energy efficiency. Coke oven gas, a by-product gas of coking plants, could be hydrogen source because it contains a large amount of hydrogen and methane. Using coke oven gas, the steel industry proposed a newly process consisting of pressure swing adsorption, desulfurization, reforming and water gas shift process to produce hydrogen.

Steam reforming is a traditional process that hydrocarbons convert to hydrogen. Coke oven gas separated by hydrogen pressure swing adsorption process has a high concentration methane (~70%). Therefore, a large amount of hydrogen can be produced through steam reforming. However, there are several impurities such as hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) and ethylene contained in the coke oven gas. These impurities are known to cause degradation of reforming catalyst. The large-scale reforming process is operated at high pressure for compact reformer design.

In this study, the steam reforming of coke oven gas investigated the potential as a hydrogen source. Reforming catalytic experiments were conducted about coke oven gas with H₂S and desulfurized coke oven gas. It was confirmed that catalyst deactivation didn’t occur under specific pressure condition. In addition, the relationship between methane conversion rate and carbon dioxide selectivity was investigated.