Catalytic walls and micro devices for generating hydrogen by low-temperature steam reforming of ethanol

A. CASANOVAS; M. DOMÍNGUEZ; C. LEDESMA; E. LÓPEZ; J. LLORCA

Madrid, España

Simposio; International Symposium on Catalysis for Clean Energy and Sustainable Chemistry (CCESC); 2008

Motivated by the possibility of using hydrogen as an energy carrier and the rapid implementation of fuel cells, hydrogen production technologies are currently being investigated and developed thoroughly. In this context, the low temperature reforming of alcohols offers a nice solution for supplying hydrogen to portable fuel cells while avoiding safety and storage issues related to gaseous hydrogen. In the present work, we report the steam reforming of ethanol at 673-773 K for hydrogen generation in small-scale portable devices over conventional monoliths (channel width ~0.9 mm), stainless-steel microreactors (channel diameter ~0.5 mm), and silicon micro-structured monoliths (channel diameter ~3-4 mm) coated with thin layers of reforming catalysts.