Hydrogen from coal-derived methanol via autothermal reforming processes

This paper reports on an investigation of hydrogen production via reformation of coal-based methanol. Through chemical analysis, coal-based methanol has shown to have higher amounts of trace hydrocarbons than chemical grade methanol derived from natural gas. While these trace hydrocarbons are typically insignificant for some energy conversion devices, fuel cell applications require ultra pure hydrogen. An autothermal reformer was investigated to find the optimal hydrogen production method with the existence of such trace impurities. Based on previous experimental results, steam reforming of coal-based methanol has shown significant catalyst degradation caused by the trace impurities. Autothermal reformation processes using coal-derived methanol avoids degradation with the trace impurities due to a higher operating temperature generated by the oxidation step. Autothermal reformation can also avoid some of the energy penalties of steam reformation but generally has a lower output concentration of hydrogen due to the diluent nature of using air as the oxidizer. This investigation shows that hydrogen production from coal-derived methanol via autothermal reformation is feasible when considering fuel cell applications.