Application of an Existing Detailed Chemical Kinetic Model to a Practical System of Hot Coke Oven Gas Reforming by Noncatalytic Partial Oxidation

For more efficient utilization of coke oven gas (COG), a byproduct from the production of metallurgical cokes, a reforming technology of hot COG (HCOG) was developed to obtain material gases suitable for methanol production. A test plant was installed on a platform of an operating coke oven. HCOG was fed into a tubular reactor (0.6 m i.d. and 3.2 m long) at flow rates from 28 to 103 Nm3/h and was partially oxidized by injecting O2 (from 12 to 30 Nm3/h) from nozzles near the inlet. Exhaustive test runs identified the appropriate reforming conditions required to achieve more than 2.2-fold syngas amplifications, and the optimum product gas composition for methanol synthesis. Numerical simulations using detailed chemical kinetics coupled with a plug-flow reactor model were also conducted. The kinetic model developed by Richter and Howard [Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2002, 4, 2038−2055] including 257 chemical species and 2216 elementary steplike reactions was used. HCOG was modeled as a multicomponent gas mixture involving H2, CO, CO2, CH4, C2 hydrocarbons, H2O, and 31 aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene and toluene, as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons up to coronene, to represent the HCOG tar. Satisfactory agreement was observed in comparisons between the predictions from the numerical simulations and the data measured from the 20 test runs, indicating that the model can be a promising tool toward designing a demonstration/commercial HCOG reforming plant.