Hydrogen production from hydrocarbons with use of plasma discharges under high pressure condition

New H₂ production system from hydrocarbons is under development that uses plasma discharges working in high pressure condition over 1.5 atm. Here methane and propane are tried at present. This system is objected to be installed on the moving vehicles and the produced H₂ gas is directly supplied to the fuel cell on the vehicle. The hydrocarbons can be easily compressed into liquid state for storing in the conveyable tank, while H₂ gas requires a lot of extra energy for compression. For those purposes three kinds of plasma discharge methods are tried: 1) corona discharge plasma system; 2) dielectric barrier discharge nonthermal plasma system; and 3) nonthermal plasma reactor filled with dielectric pellet catalysts. Clear decompositions of hydrocarbons to produce H₂ gas have been observed without CO_x. Decomposed carbon powder is attached fully on the electrodes and no contamination on the chamber wall is observed.