Stacked etched aluminum flow-through membranes for methanol steam reforming

Electrochemical etching has been used to obtain aluminum foil with high surface area for use as electrodes in electrolytic capacitors. In this approach, direct current etching first generates straight penetrating microchannels, and then a second etching step enlarges the microchannel diameter. In the present work, we developed catalyst supports using aluminum etched with microchannels as a microreactor. The metal aluminum foil catalyst support obtained by etching contained microchannels with a diameter of 1.0-3.0 μm (10,000-15,000 microchannels/mm2). We stacked membrane layers and evaluated their performance in methanol steam reforming. The performance of the reactors containing stacked membranes improved as the layer number increased. The microchannels in this catalytic membrane could be used as reaction channels, were easy to fabricate at low cost, and could be mass-produced continuously. This novel catalytic membrane support opens up new possibilities for practical fabrication of industrial materials.