Regular Article

Plasma processing methods for hydrogen production^*

¹ Department of Marine Electronics, Gdynia Maritime University, Morska 81-87, 81-225 Gdynia, Poland
² Centre for Plasma and Laser Engineering, The Szewalski Institute of Fluid-Flow Machinery, Polish Academy of Sciences, Fiszera 14, 80-231 Gdańsk, Poland

^a e-mail: jmiz@imp.gda.pl

Received: 17 November 2015
Revised: 21 January 2016
Accepted: 21 January 2016
Published online: 8 August 2016

Abstract

In the future a transfer from the fossil fuel-based economy to hydrogen-based economy is expected. Therefore the development of systems for efficient H₂ production becomes important. The several conventional methods of mass-scale (or central) H₂ production (methane, natural gas and higher hydrocarbons reforming, coal gasification reforming) are well developed and their costs of H₂ production are acceptable. However, due to the H₂ transport and storage problems the small-scale (distributed) technologies for H₂ production are demanded. However, these new technologies have to meet the requirement of producing H₂ at a production cost of $(1–2)/kg(H₂) (or 60 g(H₂)/kWh) by 2020 (the U.S. Department of Energy’s target). Recently several plasma methods have been proposed for the small-scale H₂ production. The most promising plasmas for this purpose seems to be those generated by gliding, plasmatron and nozzle arcs, and microwave discharges. In this paper plasma methods proposed for H₂ production are briefly described and critically evaluated from the view point of H₂ production efficiency. The paper is aiming at answering a question if any plasma method for the small-scale H₂ production approaches such challenges as the production energy yield of 60 g(H₂)/kWh, high production rate, high reliability and low investment cost.