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AssigneesJapan Science and Technology Agency, TDK Corporation
InventorsHitoshi Takamura, Masuo Okada, Masayuki Ogawa, Tomoyuki Saito
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To provide a method and an apparatus for reforming a hydrocarbon with a prolonged life of an oxygen-permeable membrane and a high recovery rate. The oxygen-permeable membrane absorbs the free energy change, ΔG, of a partial oxidation reforming reaction and then converts it into work for oxygen isolation and Joule heat, Q. Here, as seen in Table 1 and FIG. 1, ΔG of the partial oxidation reforming reaction is approximately ten times larger than ΔH, and further increases as the temperature increases. The generated Joule heat, Q, has to be removed at a high efficiency, and this removal process is achieved by returning a portion of the Joule heat to the system as the entropy change, TΔS, of the partial oxidation reaction itself and by steam reforming using the total energy change, ΔH.
A stacked structure reforming apparatus, comprising pairs of flat plate units each of which has a symmetrical shape with respect to each of two mutually perpendicular central axes extending through the center thereof, the flat plate units of each pair being rotated by 90° from each other, the pairs being stacked so that the flat plate units are alternately arranged, and, a top plate unit and a bottom plate unit that sandwich the pairs of flat plate units, wherein:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.