Design of a Natural Gas Steam Reforming Process for Hydrogen Production Powered by a Solar Furnace

The work involved in this paper has been developed as part of project NEST “Network for Energy Sustainable Technologies" framed in the PE program "Green Energies for the Future". It aims to develop technologies for the conversion and use of renewable sources that should be sustainable, both from an environmental and a social point of view. In particular, the paper shows the design of a process that employs the high temperature heat produced by a solar furnace, realized at Research Centre of ENEA in Portici, to supply a system for the hydrogen production based on the steam reforming natural gas process. In the direction of the decarbonization of the chemical industry, the solar concentration-based plant appears well compatible with the endothermic stage of a reforming based plant, in which the selected hydrocarbon reacts with steam to produce a hydrogen-rich syngas (to be refined in the further purification stages). [1]