Production of hydrogen by plasma-reforming of methanol

✍ Scribed by Ya-Fen Wang; Yen-Sheng You; Cheng-Hsien Tsai; Lin-Chi Wang

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 328 KB
• Volume: 35
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0360-3199
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2010.06.104

✦ Synopsis

The reforming of methanol is usually carried out by a catalytic process. In this study, a single-stage, non-catalytic, methanol pyrolysis and reforming, process for producing mainly hydrogen using an atmospheric-pressure microwave plasma reactor is demonstrated. When the applied power was elevated from 800 to 1400 W, the selectivity of H 2 increased from 77.5% to 85.8% at inlet molar fraction of MeOH ¼ 3.3%. The selectivities of carbon-containing byproducts were in the order: CO > carbon black > C 2 H 2 > CH 4 > CO 2 w C 2 H 4 . In addition, a higher conversion of methanol with a higher selectivity of H 2 was achieved at a higher applied power. While a low required energy consumption of H 2 (13.2 eV/molecule-H 2 ) was obtained at a low applied power (800 W) and a higher inlet concentration of methanol (5.0%).