An autothermal reformer based on porous Ni plates for hydrogen generation

A reformer for small-scale fuel cell was developed using porous Ni plate as a catalyst. The catalyst was active for autothermal reforming of methane, propane, iso-octane, methanol, or ethanol. A number of the catalyst plates were stacked to form an autothermal reformer. When porous Ni-Cr plate was used, gradual oxidation of the catalyst occurred due to the air purging of the reactor in shut-down process, leading to degradation of the reactor performance. Compared with Ni-Cr catalyst, Ni-Al alloy had higher oxidation resistance and comparable activity toward methane and propane reforming. In-situ formation of Ni-Al catalyst plates from green sheets composed of Ni and Al powders was studied to simplify the reactor fabrication. Under several oxidation-reduction cycles, the reactor showed stable performance. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 2007 AIChE Annual Meeting (Salt Lake City, UT 11/4-9/2007).