Techno-economic assessment of process integration models for boosting hydrogen production potential from coal and natural gas feedstocks

The elevated energy demands from past decades has created the energy gaps which can mainly be fulfilled through the consumption of natural fossil fuels but at the expense of increased greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, the need of clean and sustainable options to meet energy gaps have increased significantly. Gasification and steam methane reforming are the efficient technologies which resourcefully produce the syngas and hydrogen from coal and natural gas, respectively. The syngas and hydrogen can be further utilized to generate power or other Fischer Tropsch chemicals. In this study, two process models are developed and technically compared to analyze the production capacity of syngas and hydrogen. First model is developed based on conventional entrained flow gasification process which is validated with data provided by DOE followed by its integration with the reforming process that leads to the second model. The integrated gasification and reforming process model is developed to maximize the hydrogen production while reducing the overall carbon dioxide emissions. Furthermore, the integrated model eradicates the possibility of reformer's catalyst deactivation due to significant amount of H₂S present in the coal derived syngas. It has been seen from results that updated model offers 37% increase in H₂/CO ratio, 10% increase in cold gas efficiency (CGE), 25% increase in overall H₂ production, and 13% reduction in CO₂ emission per unit amount of hydrogen production compared to base case model. Furthermore, economic analysis indicated 8% reduction in cost for case 2 while presenting 7% enhanced hydrogen contents.