Talk:Syngas

Reference links broken
The links for references 14 and 15 (and possibly others) do not appear to be working. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.253.225.236 (talk) 21:09, 22 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Reference 14 seems to be working. Reference 15 redirects to the news and events page of the University of Minnesota, however you can still find the reference using the Way Back Machine. I suggest replacing the reference address with the following link: Creating fuel from sunlight. Glitterpossum (talk) 14:53, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Does that mean to say CO(H2)3?
It says that syngas is CO + 3H2. Does that mean to say CO(H2)3? ---The Penguin--- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.134.38 (talk • contribs) March 28, 2005(UTC)


 * No, it means that it consists of carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas in a 1:3 molar ratio HappyCamper 02:23, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gasified coal is one source of syngas
Gasified coal is one source of syngas and so you could merge this topic into the syngas page, but to treat syngas fully, it is necessary to also mention that syngas can be produced by reformation of NG and by gasification of biomass. NG production of syngas is infact quite important since several large auto and energy companies are now using or considering using this technology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.223.50.144 (talk • contribs) 2 August, 2005 (UTC)


 * What under Gasified coal isn't covered in coal's Liquefaction section? Simesa 04:28, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

There is also an article on town gas
There is also an article on town gas, could these all be merged together? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.239.24.22 (talk • contribs) 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * No, one involves gassification, one involves liquefaction. Lokiloki 07:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry but neither involve liquification directly although there are processes to create liquid products (GTL) from syngas. Jcaiken 02:15, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

"Syngas" should be a disambiguation page
Don't forget wood gas, which is an extensive article. I think putting all of these under the heading of "gasified coal" gives the impression that coal is the only (or best) source of hydrocarbon gases. In my opinion "syngas" should be a disambiguation page that points to the various methods. --Benjamindees 04:05, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I think this is a good idea. Creat an article for "Synthetic Gas" with the current contents of Syngas and make it a disamiguation page. Who all is in favor of this solution? Reflux 17:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Benjamindees, I strongly disagree with this idea. Anyone who carefully reads the opening paragraphs in this article with a neutral point of view (NPOV), as required by Wikipedia's NPOV policy, will see that it does not stress coal gasification as the only or best way of producing syngas. The term "syngas" has been widely used in the engineering community for about 40 to 45 years of my 55+ years as a chemical engineer ... and I don't think it should be relegated to a disambiguation page.


 * Reflux, I welcome you to Wikipedia. We badly need more engineers. But please don't be in such a rush to ask for some sort of straw vote on this. Wait until there has been at least 4 or 5 other responses. After all, Benjamindees made this suggestion 8-9 months ago and had no response until now ... which indicates to me that it had little support. - mbeychok 18:38, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Looking at how the page is setup, especially with "See Also" links at the bottom, I think it's good the way it is currently. I didn't mean to have my, "Who all is in favor of this solution?" as being a vote but simply a calling for other people to voice their opinion on the idea. I figured all this time without a response was simply because this topic doesn't get as much traffic as others. Reflux 05:09, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Just found this in my other searching of wikipedia. Look how Flux has their disamiguation page setup. I mean, assuming someone else thinks we need one still. Reflux 09:38, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Water gas article that should merged here
There is also a water gas article that should merged here, I think. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.36.128.14 (talk • contribs) 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * water gas is a different gas and chemical than Syngas Reflux 10:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * They'r all different fuels they need different pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.188.224.60 (talk • contribs) 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The wikipedia article on "water gas" claims it is hydrogen + carbon dioxide, but I don't think that is a hard and fast definition. Other sources define water gas to be hydrogen + carbon monoxide, which is syngas.  That is what the encyclopedia britannica says, for example.  I think these old coal gasification schemes, and their various names, are getting confused in wikipedia. DonPMitchell (talk) 22:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I recommend that Syngas and Towngas remain separated
Since the name ˈˈˈsyngasˈˈˈ has a specific background and ˈˈˈtown gasˈˈˈ is very generic I recommend that they remain separated. Benkeboy 16:49, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree they should be kept the on their own pages. The reading I've done about research with syngas uses that term, Synthetic Gas, and not "town gas" or "wood gas" Reflux 10:26, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I also agree the two should remain on separate pages --Alex 14:45, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the suggested merging of the Town gas article into this one
On March 27, 2006, User:Petri Krohn tagged this article with a suggestion of merging the Town Gas article into this article and the tag asks for discussion. I do wish that when someone tags an article like that, he/she would state the reasons for doing so here on the Discussion page to start the ball rolling. It would only be courteous to do so.

I oppose the suggestion most strongly. Anyone reading the Town gas article in detail will see that:


 * It is badly in need of some good organization.
 * A lot of it is very badly written. Some of it reads like some notes written on a piece of scrap paper. Other parts read as if they are just lists of what else is needed.
 * It needs some thorough Wikifying.

In my opinion, before the Town gas article is merged with any other article, it needs a complete rework and rewrite by an expert in the field. - mbeychok 07:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Manufactured gas plant article globalisation and merge
This article is essentially extremely good.

I suggest that the article “Manufactured gas plant” should be merged here as it talks of the process and history while not the describing the plant. This would also give the Manufactured gas plant article the global perspective that it currently lacks and would enhance this article with North American Information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufactured_gas_plant Jewell.box 20:12, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Manufactured gas
I have read the articles on "Town gas", "Wood gas", and "Water gas", and concur with those who suggest some revisions/merging are desirable. The three terms above are not in generally commmon use, and users searching WP might never find them directly. They are all terms that should be replaced with one term: Manufactured gas. The chemistry of converting organic materials or carbon to CO and H2 are similar. The three terms can be defined and compared in a new "Manufactured gas" article. There may also be other WP articles that should be subsumed into the new "Manufactured gas" article. The "Manufactured gas" article should emphasize historical processes, the basic chemistry, the amount of energy required, and so forth. Other terms such as "producer gas" should be introduced. It's important to describe the way manufactured gas can be altered by the water gas shift reaction to produce a high-hydrogen manufactured gas. This naturally leads to the modern era, where the historical "manufactured gas" technology has been replaced by quite sophisticated processes, using special catalysts, equipment, and sensors. This is the SynGas industry, which makes feedstock for chemical plants, and so forth.

The reason I suggest a comprehensive "Manufactured gas" article is that there has traditionally been a technological separation between which fossil raw materials are used as a feedstock to produce some kind of gas. In early days, we used controlled oxidation of solid biomass, coal, or coke to manufacture gas, which was common before large quantities of natural gas had been discovered and made available. Such "manufacturing" of gas has since dwindled or become obsolete (except for niche cases) because of the advent of natural gas. Natural gas has now replaced almost all uses of "manufactured gas" for heating and electrical energy production.

For special purposes, we now use controlled oxidation of natural gas to produce a mixture of gases, and this is called gas reforming. Gas reforming is used extensively to produce industrially-important chemical feedstock material, or the reducing gas for iron ore reduction. Therefore, there is logic in creating an article on "Manufactured gas", with content and emphasis as described above. The chemistry is still relevant, so it would be useful in other WP articles. I suggest that the SynGas article cover modern industrial processes, such as natural gas reforming, hydrogen production, and processes for synthetic production of methane and other hydrocarbons (from any biomass or fossil substance), especially those operating commercially, plus any which are currently in serious development.

If you try to include everything in the SynGas article, it will be really big, and a huge amount of work for one or more authors. Thermbal 22:01, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

To merge or not to merge?
The scale and range of the information available on the conversion of hydrocarbon feedstocks into a 'syngas' which can then be used for synthesis of other hydrocarbon products is so large that putting it all under a single heading of "Syngas" would probably generate more confusion. This topic covers a number of industries (domestic gas manufacture, ammonia, hydrogen, methanol, Synfuels, GTL etc.) that have their own history, standards, terminology etc. I suggest that careful cross-referencing of these topics would make the topics more accessable to a reader. Jcaiken 02:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * If these articles are to remain separate, not only should they be cross-referenced, but the individual articles should be strictly disambiguated from one another, that is, each article should address a narrow subject and refer to related articles when relevant. Thomas.Hedden (talk) 16:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

removal
I removed the specifics on the copper CO purification system. Although nice, it has nothing to do with syngas itself. Sikkema 12:00, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Energy effiicient / energy intensive
This sentence doesn't make sense to me:

'The total energy efficiency of cryogenic processing is not very high, if the gas is used to make fuel, meaning that it is not very energy intensive.' 78.151.175.249 (talk) 08:53, 11 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I just noticed that too, and put in a fact tag. Something is backwards there. --John Nagle (talk) 16:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Extra source: Article in the CryoGas International Business Journal
Gideon, Gradman. "Channeling Landfill Waste into Clean Energy Solutions" RickJP (talk) 09:39, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * On CryoGas.com

Improper Unicode Character
Unicode character U+F044 is used in several equations. This Unicode code point is in the Private Use area, is not a standard encoding of whatever character was intended, and hence will not display properly with most fonts.

It appears that a capital Greek delta is intended and the expression is for the change in enthalpy. This is correctly represented as U+0394 "Greek Capital Letter Delta" in the Greek and Coptic Unicode block or U+2206 "Increment" in the Mathematical Operators Unicode block. (Note that Unicode also contains a variety of mathematical capital deltas in different styles.)

I have replaced these occurrences of U+F044 with U+2206 as the best Unicode representation of delta used to indicate change of a thermodynamic quantity (enthalpy in this case).Floozybackloves (talk) 15:33, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Producer gas is not syngas and should not be confused
Syngas, short for synthesis gas, is not producer gas. The key difference is in nitrogen. Producer gas is made with air in the reduction process, but there is no air in the making of synthesis gas. Synthesis gas is not made from producer gas and the machinery to make synthesis gas is not a downdraft gasifier, such as makes producer gas, by injecting air thru nozzles or tuyers, degrading woody biomass to a char... an exothermic process.

Producer gas is a low energy gas, with perhaps 50% N, while synthesis gas is a high energy gas composed of significant quantity of H2 and CO. Synthesis gas, derived from the water gas reaction is highly endothermic requiring significant energy input, which is more heat than being made in a downdraft gasifier.

Producer gas is producer gas and synthesis gas is "syngas"... not one and the same. Changes should include the producer gas and syngas new section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Woodgasmaker (talk • contribs) 02:38, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Enthalpy changes in the production section need correction
The enthalpy changes for the syngas reactions listed in the production section need to be corrected. The following calculations show the corrected results:

Standard enthalpy change of formation (from the article in the Wikipedia)

H2O(liquid)     ΔH = -285.830 kJ/mol

H2O(gas)         ΔH = -241.818 kJ/mol

CO2	         ΔH = -393.509 kJ/mol

CO               ΔH = -110.525 kJ/mol

Similar numbers can be found in different publications of standard enthalpy of formations from the elements. So these numbers are good, but they do not lead to the enthalpy changes listed in the article.

The enthalpy change of formation of the elements, C, H2 and O2 are by definition zero.

Together these numbers make it possible to compute the change in enthalpy for the three reactions listed in the section.

C + H2O --> CO + H2;  ΔH = -110.525 + 285.830 = +175.305 kJ/mol  (rather than 323.1 kJ/mol)

C + O2 --> CO2;       ΔH = -393.509 kJ/mol             (agrees with -394 kJ/mol)

CO2 + C --> 2CO;      ΔH = 2*(-110.525) + 393.509 = +172.459 kJ/mol    (rather than 281.2 kJ/mol)

Kslackner (talk) 02:37, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Replaced old numbers with new numbers. Old text is below:

- Syngas for use as a fuel is most often produced from coal, first by pyrolysis to coke (impure carbon), aka destructive distillation, followed by alternating blasts of steam and air, or from biomass or municipal waste mainly by the following simple paths:


 * C + H2O → CO + H2

∆H°298 = 323,1 kJ/mol
 * C + O2 → CO2

∆H°298 = -394 kJ/mol
 * CO2 + C → 2CO

∆H°298 = 282,1 kJ/mol

Kslackner (talk) 03:07, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Added info
Add this info:

Using carbon dioxide and hydrogen CO2 can be split into CO and then combined with hydrogen (H) to form syngas. This method is being examined by the solar fuels-project of the Dutch Institute For Fundamental Energy Research. The project envisions to produce CO from CO2, by treating this latter gas with microwave radiation. This appearantly was a popular method during the Cold war in Russian nuclear submarines as they needed to get rid of the CO2 gas without leaving a bubble trail. .

Don't remove, add more references if possible. 91.182.177.243 (talk) 13:35, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

See below; there is an older and simpler method of removing CO2. Whether or not the method was used on Russian subs doesn't affect the possibility that microwaves can do this, so I didn't remove any of the claim. Roches (talk) 17:19, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

BTU/area or BTU/volume?
In Syngas, should 120 BTU/scf(t) be 120 BTU/cuf(t)? Peter Horn User talk 00:56, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Please see Template talk:Convert. Peter Horn User talk 01:00, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * "typically produce syngas with a heating value range of 250 to 400 Btu/ft3" Johnuniq (talk) 01:15, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Does this mean that 120 BTU/scf(t) is an error? Peter Horn User talk 01:33, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The original text added was "Syngas that is not methanized typically has a specific heat capacity of 120 BTU/scf." (7 August 2010). Perhaps "BTUs/cf" (BTU/cubic-foot) was intended? I have no idea what the value should be, but in this context energy/volume is the only thing that makes sense to me. I asked for help at WT:WikiProject Energy. Johnuniq (talk) 10:15, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * None of the original/previous contributors of this article have weighed in yet. One of the holds the answer. Peter Horn User talk 12:07, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * And this was of no help so far. Peter Horn User talk 12:20, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The one who, User:Jkantarek, first added Syngas Left us ("rode off into the sunset"). He'll be of no help. Peter Horn User talk 14:31, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Rather make that the article as was Peter Horn User talk 14:38, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * He withdrew Peter Horn User talk 15:06, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I believe it was supposed to be standard cubic foot, which is specifically for quantifying gas Jkantarek (talk) 15:31, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

"scf" in oil and gas industry context means "standard cubic foot" which is volume, not area. Beagel (talk) 17:54, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the very useful clarification and reference. Peter Horn User talk 23:57, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Again, thanks for the above. I've asked for some clarification regarding a related issue at Template talk:Convert if anyone could help there. Johnuniq (talk) 02:52, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Submarine claim
There's a claim that Russian nuclear subs used microwave devices to convert CO2 to syngas, so they wouldn't leave a bubble trail. Presumably this refers to carbon dioxide from the crew. It's quite well known that chemical scrubber devices performed this task on submarines and spacecraft, so I placed a 1983 US article from the open literature about their use on US subs.

To confirm that the Russians didn't use a Tom Clancy method instead, I linked to the article about the Kursk sinking; the Oscar II was a cold war era nuclear sub, and it had scrubbers. UK subs most likely "got rid" of their excess carbon dioxide by using the gas to produce mixer for the officers' gin and tonic. Roches (talk) 17:15, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

The beginning of the page is now nonsensical
The beginning of the page (before even reaching the summary) is now nonsensical, since this edit: 20:00, 25 June 2016‎ 71.168.200.157 (talk)‎. . (15,163 bytes) (+809)‎. . (Added Fischer Tropsch) (undo) (Tags: Mobile edit, Mobile web edit) Not sure what they were trying to do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kalkema (talk • contribs) 17:35, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

"Others" section should be removed
Trivia sections are in general bad form on Wikipedia.

I recommend that the composition information be moved to the introduction or the "Production Chemistry" section. The other parts of this section could be left in place if the section title were changed to "Uses" or something similar.

EPadgett (talk) 02:35, 21 January 2017 (UTC)