Natural gas reforming and CO₂ mitigation

This brief review of work from the author's laboratories summarises work on the steam reforming and CO₂ reforming reactions, discussing some catalysts developed for these reactions. It then presents some work on the use of Mo and W carbides, with and without supports, for the CO₂ reforming reaction, showing that zirconia-supported Mo₂C has some potential for use in the reaction. Finally, the all-over CO₂ balances of a number of reaction sequences for the utilisation of CO ₂ are presented, these showing that the production of carbon by a sequence involving CO₂ reforming of methane followed by reduction of CO might be used to remove CO₂ under certain circumstances; the C so produced could either be used as an energy carrier or disposed of.