Simulation of Synthesis Gas Production by Ethanol Reforming

Ethanol, as a substance that can be produced from both renewable and non-renewable sources, can be used as fuel, additive to fuel or transformed into other energy carriers. Therefore The use of pure ethanol or its conversion to other compounds has been considered by researchers. In this paper, the ethanol reforming processes are simulated for synthesis gas production using Aspen HYSYS . The studied processes include ethanol steam reforming, ethanol dry reforming, ethanol steam and dry reforming and ethanol tri-reforming. The simulation results showed that the highest conversion belongs to ethanol tri-reforming by 99.60% while the lowest conversion is related to ethanol steam reforming by 96.95%. In addition conversion of dry reforming, parallel and cascade arrangement of reactors were obtained by 99.39%, 98.15% and 99.41%, respectively. H2/CO were obtained for steam reforming by 2.19-4.22, dry reforming by 1, parallel arrangement of steam and dry reforming of ethanol by 1.2-2.94, cascade arrangement of steam and dry reforming of ethanol by 1.1-2.93, and tri-reforming of ethanol by 2.01-3.40.