Intensification of hydrogen production by methanol steam reforming

•A successful coating of Pd/ZnO catalyst was produced on micro-channel blocks.•Micro-etching is equivalent to micro-milling but is cheaper and easier to scale-up.•Coating thickness does not influence neither diffusion nor thermal dissipation.•The intensification of the H2 production by MSR has been demonstrated.•Pd/ZnO microreactor can be regenerated by N2 without the reductive treatment.

This paper studies the methanol steam reforming intensification to enhance the hydrogen production in a multi-channel block type micro-reformer. The effects of operating parameters such as reforming temperature, space velocity and catalyst layer thickness on reforming performance are investigated. For optimized design and operating conditions, the 8 cm3 reformer unit produced 170 LH2/h containing on dry basis 75.0% H2, 23.5% CO2, 0.06% CH3OH and 1.44% CO at 648 K allowing the production of 218–255 W in a commercial PEMFC with 80% hydrogen utilization. This study shows that high methanol conversion can be achieved with high Pd/ZnO catalyst loading at 648 K with very low CO content (<1.5%) in the outlet stream.