Hydrogen production by oxidative steam reforming of methanol over anodic aluminum oxide-supported Cu-Zn catalyst

Oxidative steam reforming of methanol (OSRM), which is a convenient reaction for producing hydrogen, suffers from the hot spot formation problem when conventional particle catalysts are used. Recently, an anodic aluminum oxide (AAO)-supported Cu-Zn catalyst was proposed as an OSRM catalyst for its high thermal conductivity through the aluminum metal body. In this study, OSRM was conducted in a prototype reactor packed with the AAO plate catalyst strips. It was verified that the high thermal conductivity of the catalyst effectively suppresses the hot spot formation and makes the temperature profile smooth along the reactor. The start-up time of the reactor depended on the preheating temperature and was very short (less than 2 min) for preheating over 503 K. The methanol conversion and reactor temperature increased with increasing O-2/CH3OH mole ratio, indicating that the mole ratio can be used as a control variable to operate the reactor at desired conditions. Further, a reactor model was developed and verified, and the simulation showed that for a given total reactor volume, an optimal reactor configuration could be achieved by shortening the reactor length while widening the cross-sectional area. (C) 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.