Hydrogen production through the fuel processing of liquefied natural gas with silicon-based micro-reactors

• Silicon-based micro-reactors were fabricated for LNG fuel processor.
• A micro-LNG steam reformer achieved a LNG conversion of 77.4% at 600 °C.
• Carbon monoxide composition was 0.7% in product gas.
• Micro-reactors with an optimized catalyst can generate high-quality hydrogen.

Silicon-based micro-reactors for the fuel processing of liquefied natural gas (LNG) were fabricated using silicon technologies. The micro-LNG steam reformer achieves a LNG conversion of 77.4%, and the hydrogen composition of the product was 73.3% at 600 °C. The product gas was supplied to consecutive micro-reactors to carry out carbon monoxide removal through a high-temperature water–gas shift (HTS) reaction and a low-temperature water–gas shift (LTS) reaction. Under operating conditions we investigated, the micro-HTS and LTS reactors demonstrated the highest carbon monoxide conversion of 61.5% at 450 °C and 77.5% at 300 °C, respectively. The final product gas of the micro-fuel processor was composed of 75.7% hydrogen and 0.7% carbon monoxide.

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