Bibliometric studies and impediments to valorization of dry reforming of methane for hydrogen production

Abstract

Environmental pollution and energy depletion are among society's great concerns today. Simultaneous removal of the two most harmful greenhouse gases viz, CH4 and CO2 by dry reforming of methane (DRM) is a promising alternative. Production of hydrogen as a substitute fuel is an exciting and promising technology since it contributes to the decrease of environmentally hazardous emissions. Despite the numerous environmental incentives of the DRM process, it is still at an immature stage in the industry, its main problems are being highly endothermic, severe catalyst coking and subsequent deactivation among others. Hereunder, the bibliometric analysis of title search from 1970 to 2022 for keywords, countries, journals, inter-country coauthor networks and co-occurrence visualizations using the WoS database along with the R-studio were presented. Within 32 years (1990–2022), data were filtered from 1000 publications, 863 of which are research papers with an average citation of 6.182 per document, 34 review articles and 86 article proceedings with 1730 and 1338 total author keywords, respectively. It is justified that a research gap still exists as the DRM industrialization is only partly achieved. In the subsequent sections, highlights of the significance of commercializing the process is highly emphasized while effort is devoted to devising techniques to address related challenges undermining its commercialization. Possible solutions to problems that may hinder the commercialization of the process were discussed and how its commercialization will be of immense benefit in that profitable implementation could generate feed for the Fischer-Tropsch's energy process. To wind up, the article stated how the various factors can be put into practice for hydrogen production.