Hydrogen Production for Fuel Cells by a Methane Reformer Integrated with Steam Generation

Abstract

The fuel cell based heat and power co-generation is considered to be well qualified for a distributed energy system for residential and small commercial applications. A kW-scale system is under development in the New Energy Group in South China University of Technology. Natural gas is selected as fuel for hydrogen production. The system mainly consists of a fuel processing unit, a power generation unit and an auxiliary unit. The fuel processing unit includes a reformer (integrated with steam generation), two high and low temperature shift reactors, and a preferential oxidation reactor. The reformer integrated with steam generation is designed to produce hydrogen-rich syngas from natural gas and water. It can be operated under steam methane reforming or oxidative steam reforming modes. 800 grams of commercial nickel catalyst supported on gamma alumina are loaded in the reformer. The reactor performances under typical steam reforming and oxidative reforming modes are tested. Influences of reaction temperature, steam-to-carbon ratio and methane space velocity on reactor performance under steam reforming mode are experimentally investigated. Influences of oxygen-tocarbon ratio, steam-to-carbon ratio and methane space velocity on reactor performance under oxidative reforming mode are also studied. The reformer will be integrated with the other parts of the system to build a complete system.

Development and Test of a Fuel Cell Based Micro-CHP System

“…Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of fuel cell-based micro combined heat and power generation system Hydrogen production reactor is designed by Xie et al [4]. High and low temperature water gas shift reactors were designed by Xie et al [5] and Yang et al [6], the two reactors are both fixed bed reactors, and the volume of them are both 0.6L.…”

Syngas production from oxidative methane reforming and CO cleaning with water gas shift reaction

“…The catalyst is supplied by Shandong Qilu Keli Chemical Institute Co. (China) and has been widely used in industrial natural gas reforming systems in China. The details of the reformer and catalyst can be found elsewhere [10].…”

“…The oxidative steam methane reforming reactions are limited by thermodynamic constraints. Experimental results from the same reactor under steam methane reforming and oxidative steam methane reforming operating conditions have been compared with the predicted values by Gibbs free energy minimization models in a previous study [10].…”

“…The effect of bed temperature on reformer performance has been previously studied extensively [8,10,16,17]. Hence it is not studied here.…”