Hydrogen or Soot?: Partial Oxidation of High-boiling Hydrocarbon Wastes

An increased demand on hydrogen, which is essential for a deeper hydrorefining of petroleum oils to ensure better quality of motor fuels (from the point of view of exhaust emissions) motivate research on partial oxidation (POX) of high-boiling hydrocarbons residues or alternative biomass waste1–4. Process POX is based on the reaction between raw material and oxygen in the presence of water vapour5–10 and its selectivity with regard both to composition of the exhaust gas and soot formation and strongly depends on lambda parameter representing molar ratio of oxygen to carbon content in raw material fed to the POX reactor. Combination of thermal pyrolysis of raw material to hydrogen, soot, methane and oxidation or imperfect combustion of wastes to carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water are parallel reactions in the reaction space. The raw material is gasified in industrial plants5 typically at temperatures above 1300 °C under pressure of 3.5 MPa. The performance of the operating unit enables production (in the reaction space of 1 m3) of 1500 m3 h–1 of synthesis gas of a typical composition (% vol.):