New catalysts and reactor designs for the hydrogen economy

New catalyst and reactor designs are necessary to meet the expanding use of low temperature hydrogen based fuel cells. Residential and commercial power generation requires the reformer integrated to the fuel cell must be sufficiently small given that space is often a premium in many of these applications. Precious metal washcoated monolithic structures, similar to those successfully used since 1975 in automobile catalytic converters [1], provide high activity per unit reactor volume, low pressure drop and greater structural stability than traditional base metal catalysts in packed beds and thus are well suited for distributed hydrogen applications, New precious metal catalysts, with high activity densities, have been formulated for hydrogen generation since traditional base metal oxides have much lower activities per unit mass and thus are not sufficiently active when used in limited amounts as washcoats. The higher cost of precious metals is mitigated by savings due to reduced system size and existing metal recycling operations. Catalytic fuel processing, of infrastructure fuels (e.g. natural gas and LPG), are being reformed for the fuel cell to power homes, commercial and residential buildings, schools, hospitals. Such systems must operate safely and reliably in the user facilities while unattended. This brief review will illustrate the application of automotive washcoating technology to reformers for distributed hydrogen applications. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.