A novel passive feeding method for methanol steam reformers

This work presents a simple novel feeding method for a methanol steam reformer. Using a single heat source, a fixed ratio of water and methanol vapor can be fed into the reformer in a passive way. By adjusting the thermal resistances of the two separate heat paths, different amounts of heat, related to the stoichiometric ratio and heats of evaporation, are conducted to two separate evaporators to vaporize the liquid fuels. Compared with the conventional practice that feeding ratio of the two fuels are actively controlled with two pumps, no pump is needed in this novel feeding system. Thus, the controlling system can be simplified and the auxiliary power consumption can be minimized. Experiments were conducted to verify the feasibility of this novel fuel-feeding method. With increasing reaction temperature, the product composition varied from 61% H2, 20% CO2 and 0.7% CO to 72% H2, 22% CO2 and 2% CO.