Sorption enhanced hydrocarbons reforming for fuel cell powered generators

The single-step sorption enhanced reforming of methane, propane–butane mixture, ethanol, methanol over an admixture of CaO sorbent with a Ni reforming catalyst have been experimentally studied in a periodically operated quasi-adiabatic fixed bed reactor. The bed temperature profile during reforming step drastically influences the purity of product hydrogen. The best results were obtained for the temperature decrease downstream the reactant flow. In the case of the alcohols reforming the hydrogen purity was 98–99 vol% with both CO and CO2 impurities of about 10–20 ppm. A proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) fuel cell stack was successfully fed with the hydrogen produced by the single-step sorption enhanced reforming of ethanol without any loss of efficiency. Both the sorbent and the catalyst maintained sufficient activity level during 1500 h on stream and more than 600 cycles.