Hydrogen Production by Methanol Autothermal Reforming in An Integrated Reactor

An integrated reformer for methanol reforming to H2 on-board was designed and tested.It put the reactions of methanol-water-air autothermal reforming,CO water-gas shift,methanol-water vaporization as well as heat exchange between materials together in it.The Cr-Zn catalyst and Cu-Zn-Al catalyst were in autothermal reforming chamber and heat exchange chamber,respectively.The reformer did not need external heat and the other measurement of maintaining heat.The results showed that the H2 molar fraction in product could reach 51%,and CO molar fraction was lower than 0.5%.Furthermore,the H2 productivity was 6.0 Nm3·h-1,and the efficiency of energy exchange was 0.85.The reformer started up within 3 minutes by direct burning of methanol,the selectivity time was in second order.The reformer is promising for on board H2 production from methanol autothermal reforming for proton exchange membrane fuel cell.