Investigations into the Evaporation Efficiency and Hydrogen Production Rate of Methanol-Water Fuels in a Steam Reformer Tube. Issue 8 (2nd August 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Huang, Pei-Hsing; Kuo, Jenn-Kun; Tu, Wei-Chun
• Is Part Of: Combustion science and technology. Volume 192:Issue 8(2020)
• Page Start: 1550
• Page End: 1566
• Publication Date: 2020-08-02
• Subjects: Methanol steam reforming -- catalyst -- methanol-water -- hydrogen generation rate -- hydrogen production efficiency; Combustion -- Periodicals; Combustion engineering -- Periodicals; 541.36105
• DOI: 10.1080/00102202.2019.1613384
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0010-2202

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The present study considers a tubular reformer packed with CuO/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst and heater tubes. Five different fuels are considered, namely four methanol-water fuels with molar ratios of 40%:60%, 50%:50%, 62%:38%, 75%:25%, and pure methanol fuel. For the methanol-water fuels with methanol molar fractions of 40, 50 and 62%, respectively, the temperature reaches a minimum value after approximately 0.22 m. Furthermore, the methanol mass fraction conversion rate exceeds 98%. The hydrogen mass fraction increases with an increasing methanol molar fraction and has a value of approximately 13.43% given an input fuel with a methanol molar ratio of 62%:38%. For the fuels with methanol molar fractions of 75 and 100%, respectively, the methanol mass conversation rate reduces to around 66.57 and 22.72%, respectively. As a result, the hydrogen mass fraction has values of just 6.85 and 1.42%, respectively. In other words, for the inlet temperature, velocity and pressure conditions considered, the reaction efficiency is degraded for methanol-water fuels with higher methanol content, and hence the hydrogen production efficiency is reducing.