Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is the second largest contributor to climate change. This is due to significant increases in anthropogenic methane emissions as methane is a commonly wasted industrial byproduct. The potential feasibility and efficiency of using iron aluminate materials for the chemical looping reforming of methane (CLRM) through a thermochemical reduction/oxidation cycle would function to reduce methane emissions while producing syngas, an intermediate that can be used in energy and chemical production. This applies and expands on recent findings that iron aluminate features a higher capacity to facilitate water and carbon dioxide splitting under isothermal conditions compared to ceria, the commonly assumed benchmark material for solar thermochemical gas splitting, thus requiring a less energy intensive process, for solar-to-fuel conversion. CLRM is still at a low technology readiness level, so by exploring the use of iron aluminate materials instead of ceria for CLRM at lab-scale research, the productivity of solar-driven methane reforming can be improved, demonstrating an efficient, renewably-driven method of syngas production. However, most lab-scale experiments do not consider the non-ideal fluid flow in reactors despite real reactors having non-ideal mixing due to the effects of dispersion in fluids which affect the amount of time different fluid elements spend in reactors. When these effects are not accounted for, the measured rate of reaction production will include the rate of these delayed or accelerated fluid elements, resulting in inaccurate reaction rate data. In order to more accurately evaluate the productivity of the iron aluminate materials at lab-scale for later translation to large-scale predictions, a backmixing model was developed to determine the intrinsic reaction progress during experimentation. By being able to accurately measure the reaction progress, the data collected will more precisely reflect product evolution during experimentation, allowing for the effectiveness of using iron aluminate materials for CLRM to be accurately determined. This will contribute to addressing present challenges in the industrial scalability and cost-effectiveness of the ceria-based process by optimizing the materials and conditions used for solar thermochemical applications.
