A pilot plant for the production of Syngas via steam reforming of natural gas has been demonstrated at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Sydney. This plant produces syngas at a rate of 5 Nm3/hr at pressures up to 14 bar.

The reforming process, including 15 reactors, 16 combustors and 23 heat exchangers, employs Printed Circuit Heat Exchangers (PCHE) in which plates with narrow fluid passages are bonded together to form heat exchangers and catalytic beds. The microchannel plate construction provides for significant heat transfer intensification and intense process integration. The plant operates at high efficiency without producing export steam.

The microchannel plate construction also provides a platform for direct scale up simply through increasing the size and number of plates. This in turn allows for distributed production of hydrogen in small- to large-scale facilities, as needed, and with a much smaller plant footprint than current tubular reformer technology.

Comprehensive studies on the performance of the unit have been carried out, including characterisation of the reformer stages, the combustors and the water-gas shift reactors. The plant has been tested at capacities from 30 kg of hydrogen per day up to 70 kg of hydrogen per day.

The paper describes the plant design and perfomance characterisation.