Abstract: With large increases in natural gas reserves proven worldwide, it can be expected that natural gas will play an increasingly important role in energy and chemicals supplies in the 21st century. Methane is used as a fuel for industrial and residential heating, However, much more methane is produced than is required for this purpose and it may be commercially advantageous to convert methane into industrial chemicals. Selective activation of C-H bonds has been the goal of researchers in heterogeneous and homogenous catalysis for over 50 years. Selective reaction of saturated hydrocarbons like methane is difficult due to the similar high dissociation energy of activation. Plasma chemical processing is a promising route for synthesis of chemicals that have high activation energies, because very high energy can be supplied to the plasma and many kinds of reactive particles, electrons, free radicals, ions metastable species and photons, are produced in a plasma chemical processing system. This paper reviews the general situation on the thermal plasma decomposition of methane into acetylene,cold plasma catalytic conversion of methane into C 2, methanol and formaldehyde etc. The cold plasma utilized natural gas chemical engineering is discussed from process, reactor, concerted catalysis, reaction mechanisms and reaction dynamics in detail. However, the elucidation of the reaction mechanisms of reactions in the plasma is largely impeded due to the complex nature. Among all of the plasma generated species, free species are believed to be most important for chemical reactions. Extensive research has to be done in order to reasonably understand the elementary reactions.

摘要： 论述了热等离子体裂解天然气制乙炔和冷等离子体促进天然气转化的研究概况 ,着重从反应过程、反应器、等离子体与催化剂的协同效应、反应机理和动力学方面评述了国内外等离子体技术在天然气化工中利用的研究进展和发展趋势 .