Reaction characteristics of methanol steam reforming inside mesh microchannel reactor

Producing hydrogen inside microchannel reactor by reforming reaction can effectively avoid the problem of hydrogen storage for fuel cell. Compared with conventional parallel microchannel structure, mesh microchannel belongs to a kind of interconnected structure, which has been gradually applied due to its larger unit reaction area, less plugging problem, easier change and regeneration of catalyst. In this work, a mesh microchannel reactor for methanol steam reforming is developed. Comparative experiments are conducted to investigate the effects of microchannel cross-section and distribution on reaction performances under different reaction conditions. Experiment results indicate that the performance of reactor with mesh tooth microchannel plate is better than that with mesh rectangular microchannel plate. Dense-distribution in the Front direction and Sparse-distribution in the Back direction (DFSB) of both mesh tooth and rectangular microchannels present better performances than Equal-distribution in the Front-Back direction (EFB) and Sparse-distribution in the Front direction and Dense-distribution in the Back direction (SFDB) of mesh microchannels.