Development of the integrated hydrogen production system using micro-structured devices

An integrated fuel processor, which produces hydrogen for fuel cell from aqueous methanol solution, has been developed by employing wall-coated microchannel catalytic reactors for steam reforming and preferential oxidation reaction. The developed fuel processor can produce the amount of hydrogen equivalent to a few hundred watts of electricity, when supplied to a fuel cell. We fabricated methanol fuel processor consists of a catalytic combustor, heat exchangers, evaporators, a reformer, and a PrOx(preferential oxidation) reactor. CuO/ZnO/Al₂O₃ catalyst was used for reforming and Pt/Al₂O₃ catalyst was used for both preferential oxidation and catalytic combustion. Besides the reformer and the PrOx reactor, the whole system also required three micro-structured evaporators. The main evaporator for the reformer feed vaporization was integrated with the catalytic combustor, and the heat recuperated from combustor vent gas is used to vaporize the methanol feed for two additional evaporators. The integrated system was operated consistently with methanol conversion of over 99.0 mol% at 300 °C, and the carbon monoxide concentration under 20 ppm in the final product flow.