The Structural Design And Research Of Micro Methanol Steam Reformer

Hydrogen is a kind of ideal energy that is efficient and clean.And Fuel Cell is a kind of technology that utilizes hydrogen efficiently,it has a capable of converting chemical energy to electrical energy directly.Hydrogen has a great application prospect,but the problem of storage and transportation limits its development.Recently,various of on-site hydrogen producing methods appeared in order to solve these problems.A type of effective method is reforming,and methanol steam reforming is one of the most widely researched methods.There are many products on methanol steam reforming now,but commonly used for military,that usually has a large size and high cost,rarely small portable ones.And in the recent study of methanol steam reforming,articles about reforming catalyst or theoretical models are common,structure design ones are less.And the structure of reformer has a decisive effect on its performance,so it is necessary to set research for this part.This article concerns about small-size methanol steam reformer,analyzed the development of methanol steam reforming at home and abroad,also analyzed the research status of reforming catalysts,modeling and structural design of reformers.Established a model of small-size methanol steam reformer by finite element method,contrast analysised various structures of different steam reformers.Mainly focused on the performance of methanol steam reforming in different structured reformers,aimed at improving the methanol conversion and the hydrogen selectivity,reducing the product of CO and other by-products.In this way,the structure design of the reformer is optimized.Then fabricated some reformers which has a relative good performance in the modeling analysis,and tested the actual performance through experiments.Finally,under the condition of 240?,the methanol conversion of the reformer is nearly 100% when the feeding flow rate is less than 0.6 ml/min,the reformer can still maintain a high methanol conversion when the feeding flow rate reached 0.8 ml/min,and the maximum hydrogen flow rate is higher than 784 ml/min.Finally,connected the reformer to the stack consists of eleven pieces of HT-PEMFC(High Temperature-Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell),let the reformer supply hydrogen for the electric reactor,tested the practical working performance of the reformer.Then connected the stack to the resistive load,tested that the stack can output a current above 3 ampere when using the designed reformer,and the system's maximum power output reached 21.87 W.