• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.84-89
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• 2007

Direct decomposition of hydrocarbon (methane, propane) was studied using a thermal plasma to produce high purity hydrogen and carbon black. Thermodynamic equilibrium compositions were calculated based on the minimization of Gibb's free energy, and decomposition experiments were performed on the basis of calculation results. The purity of hydrogen was found to be depended strongly on the flow rate of hydrocarbon. The decomposition conditions for high purity hydrogen were investigated. The purity of hydrogen produced from methane decomposition was higher than that from propane. In the case of propane, it was investigated that by products such as methane, acetylene, and ethane etc., by radical recombination under thermal plasma were produced more than that of methane. Produced carbon blacks were characterized by material analyses, such as XRD, Raman spectroscopy, SEM, and particle size analysis. In both methane and propane decompositions, well-crystallized carbon blacks were produced and showed uniform and sphere-like morphologies. The size of carbon black synthesized from methane was observed to be smaller than that from propane.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.40-49
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• 2021

This paper explains the development process of methane decomposition to hydrogen and carbon black using solar thermal energy. It also demonstrates the advantages and disadvantages of five different reactors for each development stage, including the reactor's experimental results. Starting with the initial direct heating type reactor, the indirect heating type reactor was developed through five modifications. The 40-kWth solar furnace installed at the Korea Institute of Energy Research was used for the experiment. In the experiment using the developed indirect heating reactor, an 89.0% methane to hydrogen conversion rate was achieved at a methane flow rate of 40 L/min, obtained at about twice the flow rate compared to previous advanced studies.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.101-109
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• 2002

This work was focused on the thermal decomposition of methane into hydrogen and carbon black without emitting carbon dioxide. Extensive experimental investigation on the thermal decomposition of methane has been carried out using a continuous flow reaction system with tubular reactor. The experiments were conducted at the atmospheric pressure condition in the wide range of temperature ($950-1150^{\circ}C$) and flow rate (250 - 1500 ml/min) in order to study their dependency on hydrogen yield. During the experiments the carbon black was successfully recovered as an useful product. Undesirable pyrocarbon was also formed as solid film, which was deposited on the inside surface of tubular reactor. The film of pyrocarbon in the reactor wall became thicker and thicker, finally blocking the reactor. The design of an efficient reactor which can effectively suppress the formation of pyrocarbon was thought to be one of the most important subjects in the thermal cracking of methane.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.40-49
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• 2021

In this study, the optical properties, heat transfer capabilities and chemical reaction performance of a methane thermal decomposition reactor using solar heat as a heat source were numerically analyzed on the basis of the cavity shape. The optical properties were analyzed using TracePro, a Monte Carlo ray tracing-based program, and the heat transfer analysis was performed using Fluent, a CFD program. An indirect heating tubular reactor was rotated at a constant speed to prevent damage by the heat source in the solar furnace. The inside of the reactor was filled with a porous catalyst for methane decomposition, and the outside was insulated to reduce heat loss. The performance of the reactor, based on cavity shape, was calculated when solar heat was concentrated on the reactor surface and methane was supplied into the reactor in an environment with a solar irradiance of 700 W/㎡, a wind speed of 1 m/s, and an outdoor temperature of 25℃. Thus, it was confirmed that the heat loss of the full-cavity model decreased to 13% and the methane conversion rate increased by 33.5% when compared to the semi-cavity model.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.487-492
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• 2008

In this paper, Thermocatalytic decomposition of methane in a fluidized bed reactor (FBR) was studied. The technical approach is based on a single-step decomposition of methane over carbon catalyst in air/water vapor free environment. The factors affecting methane decompostion catalyst activity in methane decomposition reactions were examined. The fluidization phenomena in a gas-fluidized bed of catalyst was determined by the analysis of pressure fluctuation properties, and the results were confirmed with characteristics of methane decomposition. The effect of parameters on the H2 yield was examined for methane decompostion. The decompstion rate was affected by the fluidization quality such as mobility, U-Umf, carbon attrition, elutriation and effectiveness density of fluidization gas.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.136-141
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• 2007

The decomposition of chlorinated methanes including $CCl_4$, $CCl_3H$, and $CCl_2H_2$ was carried out using a thermal plasma process and the characteristics of the process were investigated. The thermal equilibrium composition was analyzed with temperature by Fcatsage program. The decomposition rates at various process parameters including the concentration of reactants, flow rate of carrier gas, and quenching rate, were evaluated, where sufficiently high conversion over 92% was achieved. The generation of main products was strongly influenced by the reaction atmosphere; carbon, chlorine, and hydrogen chloride at neutral condition; carbon dioxide, chlorine, and hydrogen chloride at oxidative condition. The decomposition mechanism was speculated considering the results from Factsage and the identification of generated radicals and ionic species. The main decomposition pathways were found to be dissociative electron attachment and oxidative by radicals formed in a plasma state.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.2 no.4 s.8
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• pp.70-77
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• 2006

The butane decomposition over the catalyst is an attractive method for the hydrogen production. The objective of the work was investigated the catalysis of carbon black in butane decomposition reaction. The Butane decomposition was performed over carbon black catalyst in a range of $500-1100^{\circ}C$. The butane conversion of thermal decomposition and catalytic decomposition were increased with increasing the reaction temperature The butane conversion of the thermal decomposition was higher than the butane conversion of the catalytic decomposition. Hydrogen and methane were mostly observed in the butane decomposition over $1000^{\circ}C$. Especially, the hydrogen yield was steadily increased with raising the reaction temperature, It could be known that the hydrogen yield of the catalytic decomposition was higher than one of the thermal cracking because the hydrogen productivity was improved by the catalyst. The deactivation of the catalyst was not observed in the reactivity test. The surface and crystalline of the fresh and used catalysts were characterized by TEM, BET surface area and XRD analysis, respectively. The fresh carbon black particles had mostly smoothly round-shaped surfaces. In the surface of the carbon black after the reaction, the deposited carbon was formed as the protrusion-shaped carbon and the cone-shaped. The proper peaks of carbon black appeared in XRD analysis.

• Clean Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.203-213
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• 2004

Natural gas thermal decomposition method is the technology of converting natural gas (methane) into hydrogen and carbon at high temperature. The most advantage of thermal decomposition method is that hydrogen and carbon can be produced without emitting carbon dioxide. In this study, the generation of hydrogen and carbon was investigated by this natural gas (methane) thermal decomposition method. We found that pyrocarbon was created on the surface of reactor, carbon black was deposited on the pyrocarbon and final plugging phenomenon took place. To solve this problem, we tried several attempts such as introduction of double pipe reactor instead of single pipe reactor or oxidization of carbon black using $O_2$ or $CO_2$ at regular intervals of reaction. Therefore, some plugging phenomenon was resolved by this methods. Also, carbon particle size was measured by SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image and the size was about 200 nm.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.93-96
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• 2007

Catalytic activities of color and conductive carbon blacks in ethane decomposition for $CO_2-free$ hydrogen production were investigated. The ethane decomposition was carried out in a conventional fixed bed reactor under atmospheric pressure at 973-1173 K for 2 hours. When the decomposition in the presence of carbon black was compared with the non-catalytic thermal decomposition, the former exhibited significantly higher ethane conversion, higher C(s) selectivity and lower ethylene selectivity with small increase of the methane selectivity, which resulted in higher hydrogen yield. This indicates that carbon black is catalytically effective for dehydrogenation of ethane as well as subsequent decomposition of ethylene. All the carbon blacks exhibited stable catalytic activity with time. In durability tests, fluffy N-330 and BP2000 maintained their activities for 36 hours.

• Carbon letters
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.99-108
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• 2012

The sol-gel technique has been studied to fabricate a homogeneous Fe-Mo/MgO catalyst. Ambient effects (air, Ar, and $H_2$) on thermal decomposition of the citrate precursor have been systematically investigated to fabricate an Fe-Mo/MgO catalyst. Severe agglomeration of metal catalyst was observed under thermal decomposition of citrate precursor in air atmosphere. Ar/$H_2$ atmosphere effectively restricted agglomeration of bimetallic catalyst and formation of highly-dispersed Fe-Mo/MgO catalyst with high specific surface-area due to the formation of Fe-Mo nanoclusters within MgO support. High-quality thin-multiwalled carbon nanotubes (t-MWCNTs) with uniform diameters were achieved on a large scale by catalytic decomposition of methane over Fe-Mo/MgO catalyst prepared under Ar-atmosphere. The produced t-MWCNTs had outer diameters in the range of 4-8 nm (average diameter ~6.6 nm) and wall numbers in the range of 4-7 graphenes. The as-synthesized t-MWCNTs showed product yields over 450% relative to the utilized Fe-Mo/MgO catalyst, and indicated a purity of about 85%.