Abstract
Hydrogen H2 for fuel-cell power plants is commonly manufactured from hydrogen-rich materials such as hydrocarbons CnHm and alcohols CoHp(OH)q, using steam-reforming methods with catalysts. Recently, using a household-use-scale reactor with well-controlled temperature distribution, the authors have shown that the Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst has rather high performance with high hydrogen concentration CH2 at low values of reaction temperature TZ=600mm(Shinoki et al., 2011). In the present study, the authors investigate the optimum conditions as well as Shinoki et al., especially focusing on the influences of liquid-hourly space velocity LHSV upon concentrations such as CH2, CCO2,CCOand CCH4. As a result, all the concentrations are close to the theory of Shinoki et al. except for the case at low TZ=600mm and high LHSV. To settle the inconsistency of this exceptional case, the authors propose a new theory using some chemical reactions related with acetaldehyde CH3CHO.
