Reforming of heavy oil using nonthermal plasma

Reforming of heavy oils into light hydrocarbons has been experimentally studied using nonthermal plasma. The purpose of this study was to improve the understanding of the parameters for optimal design of the heavy oil reforming plasma reactor driven by AC high voltage. The low molecular weight hydrocarbons obtained constitute the NO_x removal system using light olefin hydrocarbons, such as ethylene and propylene as additives. In this paper, we examined the effect of the parameters such as gap distance of the electrodes and power applied. Results indicated that the reactions occurring in this heavy oil conversion process showed an important selective behavior. The major products obtained were hydrogen and hydrocarbon compounds with one, two, three, and four atoms of carbon, such as CH₄, C₂H₄, C₂H₆, C₃H ₆, and C₄H₁₀, ethylene being the main compound. The optimum set of values for the parameters studied gave rise to efficiencies on the order of 2.3 μmol/J