Hydrogen Production by Ethanol-Steam Reforming Using Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃ Catalyst

Abstract

Supposing the design of household-use-scale ethanol-steam-reforming reactors, the authors conduct experiments with Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃ catalyst. More specifically, the authors investigate the influences of liquid-hourly space velocity LHSV upon concentrations such as C_H2, C_CO2, C_CO and C_CH4 and the influence of LHSV upon the ethanol conversion X_C2H5OH, in a wide range of LHSV at several S/C's and at several T_R's. To conclude, all the concentrations are close to the theory of Shinoki et al. (2011) except for the case at high LHSV (> 0.6 h^-1) and low T_R (= 520 K). To settle the inconsistency of this exceptional case, the authors propose a new theory using some chemical reactions related with acetaldehyde CH₃CHO. By introducing both ethanol-decompose-reaction ratio α and the chemical-equilibrium performance measure β into this new theory, we can settle the inconsistency. Furthermore, the authors discuss the influences of S/C and T_R in addition to LHSV.