Methanol In-situ Hydrogenation Fuel Cell System Integration

With the depletion of traditional energy sources and the increasing environmental pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels,humanity has begun to seek clean new energy sources.Due to its high energy and no pollution,hydrogen is considered to be the main energy source in the future.The fuel cell can directly convert the chemical energy of hydrogen into electric energy,which is not limited by the Carnot cycle,has high energy conversion efficiency,no pollution,no noise,and has a broad development prospect.Currently,the integration of hydrogen production from methanol reforming and fuel cells is the focus of research.In this paper,the method of combining theory with practice is adopted.The overall experimental design and performance verification of methanol in-situ hydrogen fuel cell system integration are carried out.The stable output of the system is achieved and it has a certain degree of innovation.The system design and verification were mainly conducted in two parts: methanol in-situ hydrogen production module and fuel cell module.The system working principle,optimization and implementation,testing and analysis were studied.Firstly,the thermodynamic simulation analysis of methanol steam reforming reaction system was carried out with Aspen Plus.The sensitivity analysis tool was used to optimize the design conditions to provide a reliable thermodynamic basis for practical experiments.Through the catalyst evaluation test,the using conditions of the steam reforming hydrogen production catalyst and the carbon monoxide methanation catalyst were investigated by multi-factor analysis method to determine the actual suitable reaction conditions.The two type catalysts were subjected to highly efficient coupled loading design,and the stability experiment was conducted so that the product gas' s quality met the fuel cell's requirement of fuel.In terms of system design,the main in-situ hydrogen production module for methanol and the fuel cell module were designed and constructed.The functions include central control,temperature acquisition,gas-liquid pump drive,electric heating,and electronic load integration.SIMATIC S7-1200 controler is used as the control center of the system,it can automatically realize the feed rate,temperature management and battery power output control of methanol solution.The startup characteristics and power generation characteristics of the system prototype were tested and analyzed,and the system function was initially verified.The methanol in-situ hydrogenation fuel cell system completed in this paper has good expandability and compatibility,a high practical value,and has certain reference value for future research work.