• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.129-136
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• 2017

Characteristics of $ZrO_2$ felt supported Cu/Zn catalysts have been investigated for the production of hydrogen via methanol steam reforming. Cu and Zn in different weight percent were loaded using wet impregnation over $ZrO_2$ felt support. The catalysts were characterized with BET and FE-SEM. The performance of these synthesized catalysts were investigated at SCR=1.5, $GHSV=2000h^{-1}$, temperature=$300{\sim}400^{\circ}C$, and pressure=2.5~19.5 barA. The results showed that the $Cu^{32.5}Zn^{7.5}ZrO_2$ catalyst was most active in terms of methanol conversion and hydrogen production. The methanol conversion in steam reforming of methanol was 84.6% at 19.5 barA and furnace $400^{\circ}C$ over $Cu^{32.5}Zn^{7.5}ZrO_2$ catalyst. The catalysts prepared using $ZrO_2$ felt show higher reactor temperature than the pellet type catalyst at same furnace temperature.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.14-20
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• 2022

In this study, the catalytic reaction characteristics for producing hydrogen using methanol steam reforming were investigated. Nickel and copper are frequently used in steam reforming reaction and methanol synthesis, were used as main active metals. As a support, hydrotalcite has a high specific surface area, excellent porosity and thermal stability, and has weak Lewis acid sites and basic properties. Hydrotalcite was used to identify catalysts of methanol steam reforming with catalytic activity and their properties. In this research, high reactivity was shown in the catalyst of copper metal with high reducibility. And increasing of active metal loading showed the higher the methanol conversion and hydrogen selectivity.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.146-152
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• 2016

A combined system with PEMFC and reformer is introduced and optimized for the real use of this kind of system in the future. The hydrogen source to operate the PEMFC system is methanol, which needs two parts of methanol reforming reaction and preferential oxidation (PROX) for the hydrogen fuel process in the combined operation PEMFC system. With the optimized methanol steam reforming condition, we tested PROX reactions in various operation temperature from 170 to 270 ℃ to investigate CO concentration data in the reformed gases. Using these different CO concentration, PEMFC performances are achieved at the combined system. Pt/C and Ru promoted Pt/C were catalysts were used for the anode to compare the stability in CO contained gases. The alloy catalyst of PtRu/C shows higher performance and better resistance to CO than the Pt/C at even high CO amount of 200 ppm, indicating a promotion not only to the activity but also to the CO tolerance. Furthermore, in a system point of view, there is a fluctuation in the PEMFC operation due to the unstable fuel supply. Therefore, we also modified the methanol reforming by a scaled up reactor and pressurization to produce steady operation of PEMFC. The optimized system with the methanol reformer and PEMFC shows a stable performance for a long time, which is providing a valuable data for the PEMFC commercialization.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.214-223
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• 2002

Kinetic and effectiveness factors for methanol steam reforming using commercial copper-containing catalysts in a plug flow reactor were investigated over the temperature ranges of $180-250^{\circ}C$ at atmospheric pressure. The selectivity of $CO_2$/$H_2$ was almost 100%, and CO products were not observed under reaction conditions employed in this work. It was indicated that $CO_2$ was directly produced and CO was formed via the reverse water gas shift reaction after methanol steam reforming. The intrinsic kinetics for such reactions were well described by the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model based on the dual-site mechanism. The six parameters in this model, including the activation energy of 103kJ/mol, were estimated from diffusion-free data. The significant effect of internal diffusion was observed for temperature higher than $230^{\circ}C$ or particle sizes larger than 0.36mm. In the diflusion-limited case, this model combined with internal effectiveness factors was also found to be good agreement with experimental data.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.202-209
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• 2020

In methanol steam reforming, commercial catalysts in the form of pellets are mainly used, but there are limitations to directly apply them to underwater weapon systems that require shock resistance and heat transfer characteristics. In this study, to overcome this problem, a multi-layer cup structure (MLCS) was applied to support a pellet type catalyst. The characteristics of pellet catalyst supported by MLCS and the pellet catalyst supported by conventional structure (CS) were compared by the reforming experiment. In the case of MLCS, a high methanol conversion rate was shown in the temperature range 200 to 300℃ relative to the CS manufactured with the same catalyst weight as MLCS. CS shown similar characteristics to MLCS when it manufactured in the same volume as MLCS by adding an additional 67% of the catalyst. In conclusions, MLCS can not only reduce catalyst usage by improving heat transfer characteristics, but also support pellet catalyst in multiple layers, thus improving shock resistance characteristics.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.209-219
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• 2019

Methanol is a liquid fuel which could also be produced from renewable energy sources and has appreciably high energy density. In this work, we investigated the application of $Ce_{0.9}Gd_{0.1}O_{2-x}$ supported Cu and Ni catalysts for hydrogen production via methanol steam reforming. Catalysts were synthesized by solution combustion synthesis. The prepared catalysts with various active materials and Cu loading amounts were tested in a reactor at $200-300^{\circ}C$, 0-5 barg range and steam to methanol molar ratio was 1.5. The catalytic properties of Cu and Ni were compared, and the catalytic performance was shown to depend on the amounts of metal loading and operating conditions such as reaction temperature and pressure.

• Clean Technology
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.130-136
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• 2009

Commercial catalyst (Cu-Zn/$Al_2O_3$, Johnson Matthey Co., 83-3 Catalyst) was applied to the hydrogen production by steam reforming of methanol in the micro-channel reactor (MCR). The steam reforming of methanol was tested over Cu-Zn catalyst at temperatures in the range of 200 and 300$^{\circ}C$, the catalyst size of 0.05${\sim}$2.2 mm, the space velocity of 3,000${\sim}$10,000 $hr^{-1}$ in a fixed bed continuous flow reactor. The conversion of methanol and the yield $H_2$ preferred high temperatures and low space velocities, and had optimal results with the particle size of 0.35 mm. Based on the results from experiments with fixed bed reactor, two types of MCR, boat bed and stacked bed MCRs, were studied. The stacked bed type MCR showed better methanol conversion compared with the boat type one.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.3-8
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• 2008

Effect of external heating rate on the conversion efficiency for the steam reforming of methanol is investigated numerically considering both heat and mass transfer of the species in a packed bed microreactor. In a results from the numerical simulation, the conversion efficiency of methanol has been obtained for the external heating rate. The axial variation of mole fraction of methanol has been additionally presented for several cases of external heating rates. The results show that for the constant inlet temperature condition the conversion efficiency of methanol increases with external heating rate over the range of operating conditions.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.82-88
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• 2020

Recently, a fuel reforming plant for supplying high purity hydrogen has been studied to increase the operation time of underwater weapon systems. Since steam reforming is an endothermic reaction, it is necessary to continuously supply heat to the reactor. A fuel reforming plant needs a methanol-O₂ catalytic burner to obtain heat and supply heat to the reformer. In this study, two types of designs of a catalytic burner are presented and the results are analyzed through the experiments. The design of the catalytic burner is divided into that the O₂ supply direction is perpendicular to the methanol flow direction (Design 1) and the same as the methanol flow direction (Design 2). In case of Design 1, backfire and flame combustion occurred in the mixing space in front of the catalyst, and in the absence of the mixing space, combustion reaction occurred only in a part of the catalyst. For above reasons, Design 1 could not increase the exhaust gas temperature to 750℃. In Design 2, no flashback and flame combustion were observed, the exhaust gas could be maintained up to 750℃. However, the O₂ distributor was exposed to high temperatures, resulting in thermal damage.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.733-742
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• 2022

Hydrogen fuel cell propulsion ships are emerging to respond to the recently strengthened carbon emission regulations in the international shipping sector. Methanol can be stored in a liquid state at normal pressure and temperature, and has the advantage of lower reforming temperature compared to other fuels. In this study, the optimal operating point of the methanol steam reforming system was derived by changing the Steam Carbon Ratio (SCR) from 0.10 to 3.00. Results showed that In terms of methanol conversion rate and hydrogen yield, the larger the SCR is the better, but in terms of system efficiency, it is most advantageous to operate at SCR 0.70 in Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) mode and SCR 0.80 in Pd membrane mode. Through this study, it was found that the optimal SCR in the reformer and the entire system including the reformer may be different, which indicates that the optimum operating point may be different depending on the change of the system configuration.