• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.61 no.2
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• pp.328-339
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• 2023

Methanol steam reforming (MSR) is a promising method for hydrogen supplying as a critical step in hydrogen fuel cell commercialization in mobile applications. Modelling and understanding of the reactor behavior is an attractive research field to develop an efficient reformer. Three-layer feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) and Box-Behnken design (BBD) were used to modelling of MSR process using the Cu-SiO₂ aerogel catalyst. Furthermore, impacts of the basic operational variables and their mutual interactions were studied. The results showed that the most affecting parameters were the reaction temperature (56%) and its quadratic term (20.5%). In addition, it was also found that the interaction between temperature and Steam/Methanol ratio is important on the MSR performance. These models precisely predict MSR performance and have great agreement with experimental results. However, on the basis of statistical criteria the ANN technique showed the greater modelling ability as compared with statistical BBD approach.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.21-30
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• 2015

Ceramic foams are prepared as positive images corresponding to a plastic foam structure which exhibits high porosities (85-90%). This structure makes the ceramic foams attractive as a catalyst in a dry reforming process, because it could reduce a high pressure drop problem. This problem causes low mass and heat transfers in the process. Furthermore, the reactants would shortly contact to catalyst surface, thus low conversion could occur. Therefore, this research addressed the preparation of dry reforming catalysts using a sol-gel catalyst preparation via a polymeric sponge method. The specific objectives of this work are to investigate the effects of polymer foam structure (such as porosity, pore sizes, and cell characteristics) on a catalyst performance and to observe the influences of catalyst preparation parameters to yield a replica of the original structure of polymeric foam. To accomplish these objectives industrial waste foams, polyurethane (PU) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) foams, were used as a polymeric template. Results indicated that the porosity of the polyurethane and polyvinyl alcohol foams were about 99% and 97%. Their average cell sizes were approximate 200 and 50 micrometres, respectively. The cell characteristics of polymer foams exhibited the character of a high permeability material that can be able to dip with ceramic slurry, which was synthesized with various viscosities, during a catalyst preparation step. Next, morphology of ceramic foams was explored using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and catalyst properties, such as; temperature profile of catalyst reduction, metal dispersion, and surface area, were also characterized by $H_2-TPR$ and $H_2-TPD$ techniques, and BET, respectively. From the results, it was found that metal-particle dispersion was relatively high about 5.89%, whereas the surface area of ceramic foam catalysts was $64.52m^2/g$. Finally, the catalytic behaviour toward hydrogen production through the dry reforming of methane using a fixed-bed reactor was evaluated under certain operating conditions. The approaches from this research provide a direction for further improvement of marketable environmental friendly catalyst production.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.28 no.9
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• pp.949-954
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• 2006

The purpose of this paper is to develop water jet plasma reactor and investigate the optimal condition of the syngas production by reforming of hydrocarbon fuel. Fuel used was propane and plasma was generated by arc discharge on water jet surface. Discharge slipping over the water surface has a number of advantages such as a source of short-wave and UV radiation, and it can be used for biological and chemical purification of water. Parametric screening studies were conducted, in which there were the variations of power ($0.18{\sim}0.74$ kW), water jet flow rate($38.4{\sim}65.6$ mL/min), electrode gap($5{\sim}15$ mm) and treatment time($2{\sim}20$ min). When the variations were 0.4 kW, 53.9 mL/min, 10 mm and 20 min respectively, result of maximum $H_2$ concentration was 61.6%, intermediates concentration were 6.1% and propane conversion rate was 99.8%.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.500-506
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• 2010

The metal monolith catalyst coated with 15wt% Ni/$MgAl_2O_4$ is applied to the natural gas steam reforming for hydrogen production. To address the improvement of adherence between metal monolith and catalyst coating layer, the pre-calcination temperature as well as the coating conditions of $Al_2O_3$ sol are optimized. When the Fe-Cr alloy monolith is pre-calcined at $900^{\circ}C$ for 6 h, $Al_2O_3$ layer was formed uniformly on the entire surface of the metal substrate. It is seen that the formation of $Al_2O_3$ layer on the monolith surface is essential for the uniform coating of $Al_2O_3$ sol onto the monolith substrate. The monolith catalyst coated with 10wt% $Al_2O_3$ sol shows high $CH_4$ conversion and good thermal stability as compared with the monolith catalyst without $Al_2O_3$ sol coating under severe reaction conditions with high GHSV of 30,000 $h^{-1}$ at $700^{\circ}C$. In addition, the metal monolith catalyst shows higher catalytic activity and better thermal conductivity than 15wt% Ni/$MgAl_2O_4$ pellet catalyst.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.457-458
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• 2008

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.13-19
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• 2008

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.140-150
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• 2007

Thermochemical 2-step methane reforming, involving the reduction of metal oxide with methane to produce syngas and the oxidation of the reduced metal oxide with water to produce pure hydrogen, was investigated on ferrite-based metal oxide mediums. The mediums, CoFZ, CuFZ, or MnFZ, were composed of the mixture of M(M=Co, Cu or Mn)-substituted ferrite as an active component and $ZrO_2$ as a binder, respectively. The WZ medium, composed of the mixture of $WO_3$ and $ZrO_2$, was also prepared to compare. With an addition of $ZrO_2$, the surface area of the mediums was slightly increased and the sintering of active components was greatly suppressed during the reduction. The higher reactivity of the reduced mediums for water splitting was confirmed by the temperature programmed reaction. From the results of the thermochemical 2-step methane reforming, the reactivity of $CH_4$ reduction and water splitting with ferrite-based metal oxide mediums was relatively higher than that with WZ, and the order of reactivity of the mediums was MnFZ>CoFZ>CuFZ>WZ.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.347-347
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• 2010

We designed a new experimental set-up for measuring activity of heterogeneously catalyzed reactions. Using this set-up, we studied reduction of carbon dioxide by carbon dioxide reforming of methane (CRM) using nickel powder as catalyst. The properties of the catalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer, Emmett & Teller (BET) surface area and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) techniques. The reactivity experiments were performed in the temperature range of $300\;-\;500^{\circ}C$. At reactivity experiment, result showed consumption of $CO_2$ and $CH_4$ with a 1:1 stoichiometry. At the same time, carbon monoxide and hydrogen were produced, which could be used for synthesizing fuels such as methanol. During the reaction, deposition of carbon on Ni was observed, which caused deactivation of the catalyst.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.180-185
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• 2019

The demands to improve the performance of the vanadium redox flow battery have attracted an intense research on modifying the carbon-based electrode. In this study, the surface of graphite felt was reformed, using cobalt oxide. The cobalt oxide was implanted into graphite felt during hydrothermal and two step heat treatments. The cobalt was deposited by hydrothermal method and the two step heat treatments made lots of holes on the graphite felt surface which is called as porous surface. The porous surface acts as an electrochemically active site for the cathodic reaction of vanadium redox flow battery. The reformed electrode shows the electrochemically improved performance compared with the pristine electrode.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.559-569
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• 2018

Catalytic supports made of carbon have many advantages, such as high coking resistance, tailorable pore and surface structures, and ease of recycling of waste catalysts. Moreover, they do not require pre-reduction. In this study, ash-free coal (AFC) was obtained by the thermal extraction of carbonaceous components from raw coal and its performance as a carbon catalytic support was compared with that of well-known activated carbon (AC). Nickel was dispersed on the carbon supports and the resulting catalysts were applied to the steam reforming of toluene (SRT), a model compound of biomass tar. Interestingly, nickel catalysts dispersed on AFC, which has a very small surface area (${\sim}0.13m^2/g$), showed higher activity than those dispersed on AC, which has a large surface area ($1,173A/cm^2$). X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis showed that the particle size of nickel deposited on AFC was smaller than that deposited on AC, with the average values on AFC ${\approx}11nm$ and on AC ${\approx}23nm$. This proved that heteroatomic functional groups in AFC, such as carboxyls, can provide ion-exchange or adsorption sites for the nano-scale dispersion of nickel. In addition, the pore structure, surface morphology, chemical composition, and chemical state of the prepared catalysts were analyzed using Brunauer-Emmett-Taylor (BET) analysis, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, and temperature-programmed reduction (TPR).