Hydrogen production from cylindrical methanol steam reforming microreactor with porous Cu-Al fiber sintered felt

In this study, the porous Cu-Al fiber sintered felt (PCAFSF) was fabricated by low temperature solid-phase sintering method. The laminated PCAFSF as the catalyst support was used for cylindrical methanol steam reforming microreactor for hydrogen production. The two-layer impregnation method was employed to coat the Cu/Zn/Al/Zr catalyst on the PCAFSF. The material composition, specific surface area and catalyst loading of PCAFSF were also measured. The effect of the fiber material, surface morphology and porosity on the reaction performance of methanol steam reforming microreactor for hydrogen production was further investigated. Our results show that the PCAFSF demonstrated much higher methanol conversion and H2 flow rate compared to the porous Cu fiber sintered felt (PCFSF) and porous Al fiber sintered felt (PAFSF) having the same porosity. Furthermore, the rough PCAFSF showed much higher methanol conversion and H2 flow rate compared to the smooth PCAFSF. In case of the PCAFSF, the methanol conversion and H2 flow rate were increased with the decrease of Cu fiber weight and the increase of Al fiber weight. The best reaction performance of microreactor for hydrogen production was obtained using the three layer PCAFSFs with 80% porosity and 1.12 g Cu fiber/1.02 g Al fiber.