Hydrogen production from ethanol decomposition by pulsed discharge with needle-net configurations

Hydrogen produced from ethanol solution by pulsed discharge was investigated in this work. With needle-net configurations, hydrogen can be easily exported from the plasma reactor thereby preventing hydrogen from consuming by the oxidizing active substances generated from pulsed discharge. Both flow rate and percentage concentration of hydrogen were enhanced with the increase of energy density, but not much change with the increase of discharge time. Flow rate, percentage concentration, and energy consumption of hydrogen were achieved about 800 mL/min, 73.5%, and 0.9 kWh/m3 H2 respectively with energy density of 6.4 J/L. All products were analyzed, which were divided into main and secondary products guiding the mechanism analysis of hydrogen production. The main products contain H2, CO, CH3OH, and the secondary products include C2H2, CO2, macromolecular compounds, nano carbon particles. The high hydrogen yield, emerged nano carbon, low ethanol and energy consumption make this method possess bright prospect in hydrogen production.