Conceptual design of syngas production by the integration of gasification and dry-reforming technologies with CO₂ capture and utilization

Syngas is an important intermediate feedstock to produce various downstream chemicals and clean fuels. In this study, two standalone process models are first developed to produce syngas from coal gasification and natural gas dry reforming which provide the results for benchmarking the conceptual design. Two process models are then developed by integrating the gasification and dry-reforming models in the parallel and series configuration to improve the process performance. All the models are developed in Aspen Plus for producing the syngas at the rate of 10,000 kmol/h with H₂/CO ratio of 2. The heat integration is also developed in a way to utilize the heat energy from the coal-derived syngas into the dry-reformer without any energy penalties. The performance of the proposed designs is compared to the standalone processes in terms of the energy, emissions and economics. The energy analysis reveals that the integrated design requires 62% less energy input compared to the standalone dry reforming process. The results also show that combining the synergies of the two technologies reduce the CO₂ emission by 53.5% compared to the standalone gasification process. In addition to improved process efficiency and reduced emissions, the integrated design offers the lowest syngas production cost of $ 0.99/kmol among all the designs. The proposed integrated designs can enable the utilization of fossil fuels in an environment friendly, technically feasible and an economical way.