Hydrogen production using ethanol-steam-reforming reactor with Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 and Ru/Al2O3 catalysts

Abstract

In the present study, we reveal the optimum conditions supposing the design of ethanol steam-reforming reactors. Experiments are conducted for two types of catalysts; namely, Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 and Ru/Al2O3. Using a household-use-scale reactor with well-controlled thermal distributions, we specify the effect of steam-carbon molar ration S/C on the hydrogen concentration CH2, and the effect of the reaction temperature T on CH2, for each catalyst, and we compare such results with chemical-equilibrium theory. As a result, the Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst shows rather high performance at low T.