Hydrogen Production from Ethanol Steam Reforming: Fixed Bed Reactor Design

GIUNTA, PABLO; AMADEO, NORMA; LABORDE, MIGUEL

Bilbao

Congreso; Chemical Reaction Engineering XI; 2007

Universidad del País Vasco

The aim of this work is to design an ethanol steam reformer to produce a hydrogen stream capable of feeding a 60 kW PEM fuel cell applying the plug flow model, considering the presence of the catalyst bed (heterogeneous model). The Dusty-Gas Model is employed for the catalyst, since it better predicts the fluxes of a multicomponent mixture. As for the external film, the Stefan ? Maxwell formulation is used, applying the linearized theory. A power law ? type kinetics is used. Results showed that it is possible to carry out the ethanol steam reforming in a compact device (1.66 10-5 to 5.27 10-5 m3).It was also observed that this process is determined by heat transfer.