Development of a methanol fuelled reformer for fuel cell applications

A compact methanol reformer for fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) has been developed and successfully tested. The reformer which has been constructed to serve a 5 kWe fuel cell operates by combined reforming of methanol (CRM) (a combination of steam reforming and partial oxidation). The exploitable energy surplus in a fuel cell vehicle is low and therefore a combustion system for heating the reformer which utilizes a catalyst for both evaporation and oxidation of liquid methanol was developed. We were able to obtain start-up times in the region of 4–6 min depending on the oxygen-to-methanol ratio (OMR) used for the combined reforming reaction. The main drawback from decreasing the start-up time by increasing the oxygen-to-methanol ratio was that the CO concentrations in the product stream increased. The reforming reaction was performed over copper-based catalysts while the oxidation took place over a mixture of platinum and manganese-based catalysts. The catalysts were characterized using SEM-EDS, BET surface area measurement and X-ray diffraction (XRD).