Carbon catalyzed methane decomposition for enhanced solar thermal cracking

This study presents thermal decomposition of methane, laden with two activated charcoal samples, namely Fluka 05105 and Fluka 05120, which were used laden with methane in a vortex flow solar reactor and seeded in a tornado flow solar reactor. Previously, we presented our thermo gravimetric experiment results on the carbon - hydrogen reaction to show whether the injected carbon particles react with the formed hydrogen. In this work, we expanded our thermogravimetric analysis to study carbon-methane reaction at various concentrations of methane feed gas to study the favorable effect of carbon laden flow experiments for catalytic methane decomposition. Results were analyzed to discuss the threshold temperature, ultimate mass gain, average hydrogen production, amount of carbon formed, type of carbon sample, and concentration of methane in the feed gas. It is observed that average hydrogen production rate is increased with an increase in the methane volume fraction in the feed gas. Higher hydrogen and carbon production is observed when Fluka 05105 is used. For different partial pressures of methane, different ultimate mass gain is observed.