This technique produces electrons with temperatures from
4000 to 6000 K, while heavier particles have temperatures closer to
2000 K [78]. However, some researchers indicated that this process
requires more electric energy than the hydrogen generated can
producewith a fuel cell, suggesting that further improvementsmay
be necessary [78].
The corona plasma technique is similar to the gliding arc in set
up, but not in operation. In the gliding arc the plasma is pushed
down the length of the reactor, but in the corona the plasma is
generated between the electrodes through the length of the reactor
[73,81]. The plasma is created using fast rising electric pulses (i.e.
10 ns rise time and 100 ns pulse) [73,81]. An advantage of this
technique is that the length of the electric pulses is shorter than the
time between pulses, resulting in relatively low power being
consumed compared to other plasma technologies [81]. For
example, operating the reactor with a 10 ns rise time and
100 ns pulse duration at 2000 Hz results in electricity only being
used approximately 0.02% of the time. This technology has been
used to crack hydrocarbon streams prior to them entering
traditional reforming reactors, or as the reformer themselves both
with and without catalysts [73,81].
Paulmire et al. [74] compared the efficiency of several plasma
reactors. They used the following equation to define efficiency in
their case [74]: