CO removal by two-stage methanation for polymer electrolyte fuel cell

In order to remove CO to achieve lower CO content of below 10 ppm in the CO removal step of reformer for polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) co-generation systems, CO preferential methanation under various conditions were studied in this paper. Results showed that, with a single kind of catalyst, it was difficult to reach both CO removal depth and CO2 conversion ratio of below 5%. Thus, a two-stage methanation process applying two kinds of catalysts is proposed in this study, that is, one kind of catalyst with relatively low activity and high selectivity for the first stage at higher temperature, and another kind of catalyst with relatively high activity and high selectivity for the second stage at lower temperature. Experimental results showed that at the first stage CO content was decreased from 1% to below 0.1% at 250–300°C, and at the second stage to below 10 ppm at 150–185°C. CO2 conversion was kept less than 5%. At the same time, influence of inlet CO content and GHSV on CO removal depth was also discussed in this paper.