Zheng, Lei; Wang, Di; Jiang, Yunfeng; Ren, Yingyu; Wu, Yihai; Fu, Yu; Zhang, Jun

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL

2025, ,

Zheng, Lei; Wang, Di; Jiang, Yunfeng; Ren, Yingyu; Wu, Yihai; Fu, Yu; Zhang, Jun

The strong endothermic dry reforming of methane (DRM) is a reaction of interest to convert greenhouse gases into syngas for downstream chemical synthesis. However, conventional external combustion heating not only generates unwanted CO2 emissions but also suffers from heat transfer limitations. With the rising trend of renewable electricity, process electrification with Joule heating emerges as a promising alternative to combustion, facilitating decarbonization and process intensification. In this study, we systematically assessed the catalytic performance in direct Joule heating of an internal SiSiC open-cell foam packed with Ni-based pellet catalysts for DRM reaction. The interconnected porous structure of SiSiC foam enables selective and volumetric heating of pellet catalysts in a packed bed configuration. The direct selective heating of internal structure requires extremely low input power, i.e., only 65 W to reach 800 °C compared to 143 W for external oven heating, and results in a reactor wall temperature approx. 300 °C lower than from the foam centerline, with the potential to significantly reduce reactor material requirements and cost. Additionally, volumetric Joule heating provides more uniform heating profiles and approx. 30 °C higher average temperatures over the catalytic bed with no cold spots observed, leading to enhanced methane and CO2 conversions reaching 94 % and 64 % at 800 °C, respectively, which are approx. 5–10 % higher than external heating at the same foam outlet temperatures. The Joule-heated DRM ensures a significantly low specific energy demand of approx. 0.71 kWh/Nm3 for syngas production. The insights gained from this work are in principle transferable to direct Joule heating of internal structured catalysts for other endothermic reactions.