Reaction Heat Control for Steam Reforming of Ethanol with Ni-supported Latent Heat Storage Grain

Waste heat recovery is important in steel making industry. Intermittency of waste heat from batch processes is a barrier to applying heat recovery systems to steel plant. Latent heat storage using Phase Change Material (PCM) is attractive technique to solve this problem. Moreover, effective thermal energy recovery can be achieved by the combination of waste heat utilization and endothermic reaction. In this paper, Ni/Latent-heat-storage grain was fabricated and catalytic performance about ethanol steam reforming was analyzed. The fabricated grains exhibited latent heat of 69.9 kJ kg–1 and the latent heat of product didn't change after catalytic performance test. In the performance test, all of the ethanol was cracked and the maximum concentration of H2 in outlet gas flow was 62%. The result of the catalytic test indicated side reaction occurred in the experiment. Heat supply from PCM mitigated temperature change and the mitigation helped to stop decreasing H2 yield in the catalytic reaction.