Superheated steam decomposition by atmospheric pressure plasma
Muhd Hadi Iskandar*, Yukio Hayakawa, Shinji Kambara
* The author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Graduate School of Engineering, Gifu University, Japan
Abstract
Water is being considered as a source material for hydrogen production due to its abundance in nature. This can lead to promising replacements in terms of hydrogen storage and transport. In this study, saturated and superheated steam has been decomposed using a cylindrical type plasma reactor and atmospheric pressure plasma. Steam, in its superheated state, has advantageous properties in increasing plasma decomposition efficiency compared to saturated steam. Hydrogen production has been found dependent on the supplied steam flow rate, residence time, applied voltage and steam temperature. The hydrogen generation rate has shown to increase by up to 1.5 times by increasing the residence time by 17 ms. Superheated steam temperature of up to 300℃ has been investigated. Results show that increasing the steam temperature has led to increased hydrogen production activity. Increasing the steam temperature from 100℃ to 300℃ has shown to almost double the hydrogen generation rate under the same experimental conditions.
Keywords - Superheated steam, hydrogen production, atmospheric pressure plasma, DBD plasma.