Simultaneous dry reforming and desulfurization of biomethane with non-equilibrium electric discharge at ambient temperature

We investigated two types of electrical discharges for converting. biomethane into syngas at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure. Low energy pulsed discharge (LEP) has a good property for this reaction and it could convert biomethane into syngas and also H(2)S was converted into solid sulfur simultaneously. This is due to the high electron energy of LEP, and the electron has enough energy to dissociate C-C bond and C-S bond. On the other hand, dielectric barrier discharge could convert H(2)S into solid sulfur, but methane and CO(2) in the biomethane were not reacted at lower input power. Our investigation showed that proper choice of electric discharge could bring selective reaction for dry reforming of biomethane and desulfurization, and this was due to the correlation between the bond dissociation energy of each molecule and electron energy level of each discharge. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.