what is the percentage composition of carbon monoxide and hydrogen in water gas?
Answers
Answer:
Water gas is prepared by using steam (H2O) to convert some of the CO present in synthesis gas (CO + H2 in equimolar ratio) into CO2, and forming H2. This reaction is called water gas shift reaction.
CO + H2O <===> CO2 + H2
CO can be toxic and converting CO to CO2 allows you to increase the H2 content of synthesis gas.
However, water gas does not have a specific composition, like synthesis gas (1:1) does. Depending on the amount of shift reaction that is done, the ratio of CO/H2 can be decreased from 1 to a much lower number. In fact, CO/H2 ratio can be lowered all the way down to pure hydrogen. CO2 that is formed in the shift reaction can easily be eliminated from water gas, resulting in pure hydrogen.
Therefore, there is no specific ratio of CO/H2 for water gas. It depends on how much water gas shift you perform on the synthesis gas.
Explanation:
Answer:
“Water gas” is old fashioned town gas, the poisonous kind that people used to use to commit suicide by “sticking their head in the gas oven”. It’s made by passing steam over red hot coke. The coke reduces the steam by taking the oxygen atom to form carbon monoxide, CO, leaving the hydrogen. So the reaction would be -
H2O + C = H2 + CO
Now you ask for the “ratio” - would that be by volume? By weight? By mole? Basically you get one molecule of each from each molecule of steam. There will also be some impurities like nitrogen and CO2 in unknown proportions, since the easiest way to keep the coke red hot is to burn some of it with air, but there were ways to minimize that.
The incandescent fuel bed would be alternately blasted with air followed by steam. The air reactions during the blow cycle are exothermic, heating up the bed, while the steam reactions during the make cycle, are endothermic and cool down the bed. The products from the air cycle contain non-calorific nitrogen and are exhausted out the stack while the products of the steam cycle are kept as blue water gas. This gas is composed almost entirely of CO and H2, and burns with a pale blue flame similar to natural gas. BWG has a calorific value of 11 MJ/m3 (300 BTU/cu ft). (Wikipedia)