A comparison study on methanol reforming catalysts for onboard hydrogen generation

In hydrogen energy applications, methanol is the best fuel that can effectively solve the problem of the storage and transportation of hydrogen. The lowest reforming temperature among hydrocarbons also makes it the best fuel for hydrogen generation. This paper aimed to study and compare four methanolreforming catalysts and screen the best one suitable for the on-board hydrogen generation system. In this study, the in-house single-tube reactor, which can precisely control the temperature by a multistage heater, was applied to study the catalyst performance. Physical and chemical properties of the catalyst, such as methanol conversion rate, hydrogen generation rate, CO selectivity at a different liquid hourly space velocity (LHSV), catalyst density, and optimum reaction temperature, were also systematically studied. The hydrogen generation rate per unit mass of the WEF catalyst is the highest, which reached 0.122 g/h·gcat in 9.23 h-1 LHSV. And the methanol conversion rate in 7.72 h-1 LHSV is 96.74%, and somewhat below the BSF catalyst (97.90% in 7.55 h-1 LHSV). The study indicated that the catalyst made by WEF is the best catalyst for on-board hydrogen generation when comprehensively considering the requirement including the performance and vibration resistance. At the end of this paper, the optimized direction of the four catalyzers is also specified.