CO-CRACKING OF NATURAL GAS AND COAL FOR SYNTHESIS OF C_2H_2 AND C_2H_4 BY THERMAL PLASMA
The co-cracking of natural gas and coal by a 15kW nitrogen(N_2 flux:2m~3·h~(-1)) thermal plasma jet was investigated experimentally.For comparing with the cracking natural gas or coal separately, the experiments were arranged as following: (1)Cracking of natural gas;(2)Cracking of coal;(3)Co-cracking of natural gas and coal.Under the same experimental conditions, especially the same power, the experiments show that co-cracking can lead to more output of acetylene and ethylene, even more than the sum of that from(1)and(2).The analysis shows that,during the co-cracking process, the natural gas and the coal both acquire the effect of cracking separately; the surplus output may probably be resulted from the interaction of hydrogen and carbon. Here, the hydrogen is resulted from cracking of natural gas and the carbon——from cracking of coal.