Methanol Reforming for Hydrogen Production

Abstract

INTRODUCTION\nToday in China, the use of fossil fuels in vehicles has caused several environmental\nproblems, such as emission of particulate matters (PM), NOx, SOx and so on. As an ideal\nenergy carrier, hydrogen has advantages of high energy density, high conversion efficiency\nand being harmless to the environment. Thus, hydrogen-based fuel cell becomes a good\nchoice of power source for vehicles. Traditionally, hydrogen is produced from electrolysis of\nwater, which consumes much electricity, and produces a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen\nwhich needs to be separated through expensive and complicated technologies.\nConsequently, it is desirable to find better ways to produce hydrogen. Hydrogen production\nfrom methanol reforming has the advantage of generating high-concentration hydrogen with\nlow energy consumption. However there are challenges in design reactor for methanol\nreforming, such as uneven distribution of temperature in the reactor, low efficiency of heat\nexchange and large reactor size. Therefore, it is necessary to design an improved reactor to\naddress these challenges.