Thermochemical methane reforming to syngas is performed on a massive scale in the chemical industry, providing feedstock for many chemical processes such as hydrogen, ammonia and methanol production. The high temperature process heat required for the endothermic reforming reaction could be supplied by conentrated solar energy, in a hybrid solar-fossil process. This can be achieved by re-designing conventional reforming technologies to utilize solar energy as the heat source. Another possible approach is to use a two-step metal oxide redox cycle. Here we compare the two solar thermochemical reforming routes, namely redox reforming and catalytic reforming using thermodynamic analysis and discuss the prospects for both technologies with a focus on methane conversion extents, syngas composition, and energy conversion efficiencies. Further processing of the syngas to liquid fuels is also discussed, in order to highlight how these processes can fit together with gas-to-liquids technologies. The analysis highlights that the redox cycle approach could produce a higher quality syngas, but at the expense of additional thermodynamic constraints, which are sensitive to carbon formation, and also lead to a greater energy demand relative to catalytic reforming.

在化学工业中，将甲烷热化学转化为合成气的规模很大，可为许多化学过程（例如氢气，氨气和甲醇生产）提供原料。吸热重整反应所需的高温过程热可以由混合太阳能-化石过程中的聚光太阳能提供。这可以通过重新设计常规的重整技术以利用太阳能作为热源来实现。另一种可能的方法是使用两步金属氧化物氧化还原循环。在这里，我们比较了两种太阳能热化学重整路线，即使用热力学分析的氧化还原重整和催化重整，并讨论了这两种技术的前景，重点是甲烷的转化程度，合成气组成和能量转化效率。还讨论了将合成气进一步加工为液体燃料的过程，以强调这些过程如何与气液技术结合在一起。分析强调，氧化还原循环方法可以产生更高质量的合成气，但以附加的热力学约束为代价，这些约束对碳的形成敏感，并且相对于催化重整，还导致更大的能源需求。