Hydrogen production from liquid hydrocarbon fuels for PEMFC application

Lack of efficient hydrogen storage intermediate has boosted the development of fuel processor or economic onsite hydrogen production techniques for application to proton exchange membrane fuel cell promptly. Aiming to develop onsite hydrogen production techniques for proton exchange membrane fuel cell application using nickel-based reforming catalysts and stainless steel reactors, in this paper, a novel process for H2 production from liquid hydrocarbon fuels was proposed and experimentally demonstrated on a lab scale. The main operations involved prereforming, autothermal reforming, high temperature water gas shift, low temperature water gas shift and H2 enrichment by Pd membrane. The results indicated that prereforming introduction prior to autothermal reforming suppressed undesired gas phase reactions efficiently and made reforming reactions perform catalytically and smoothly, which was confirmed by a stable 500 h time-on-stream test of both prereforming and autothermal reforming catalysts. The air distributed feed applied in autothermal reforming reactor coupled the endothermic steam reforming and exothermic catalytic combustion reactions over the catalyst closely, maintaining an appropriate temperature distribution curve for autothermal reforming catalyst bed. During the process of H2 enrichment by highly H2 permeable Pd composite membrane, concentration polarization played an important role.