• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.202-209
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• 2020

In methanol steam reforming, commercial catalysts in the form of pellets are mainly used, but there are limitations to directly apply them to underwater weapon systems that require shock resistance and heat transfer characteristics. In this study, to overcome this problem, a multi-layer cup structure (MLCS) was applied to support a pellet type catalyst. The characteristics of pellet catalyst supported by MLCS and the pellet catalyst supported by conventional structure (CS) were compared by the reforming experiment. In the case of MLCS, a high methanol conversion rate was shown in the temperature range 200 to 300℃ relative to the CS manufactured with the same catalyst weight as MLCS. CS shown similar characteristics to MLCS when it manufactured in the same volume as MLCS by adding an additional 67% of the catalyst. In conclusions, MLCS can not only reduce catalyst usage by improving heat transfer characteristics, but also support pellet catalyst in multiple layers, thus improving shock resistance characteristics.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.1997-2002
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• 2007

The reformer is one of the most important chemical processes for the production of high purity hydrogen from fossil fuel. This study compares zero-dimensional model with CFD models for reaction analysis of methane-steam reformer. The zero-dimensional model is an empirical equation, however CFD model uses reactions of Arrhenius type. Because the reaction coefficients of the steam-methane catalytic reforming have not been reported before in the form of Arrhenius type, the present study aims to find the appropriate reaction coefficients. The used CFD code is Fluent 6.2 version. Several models are compared for the case of various operating temperature, mass of catalyst and steam to methane ratio.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.908-912
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• 2012

Lauan sawdust was gasified by steam reforming for hydrogen production from biomass waste. The fixed bed gasification reactor with 1m height and 10.2 cm diameter was utilized for the analysis of temperature and catalysts effect. Steam was injected to the gasification reactor for the steam reforming effect. Lauan sawdust was mixed with potassium carbonate, sodium carbonate, calcium carbonate, sodium carbonate + potassium carbonate and magnesium carbonate + calcium carbonate catalysts of constant mass fraction of 8:2 which was injected to the fixed gasification equipment. The compositions of production gas of gasification reaction were analyzed at the temperature range from $400^{\circ}C$ to $700^{\circ}C$. Fractions of hydrogen, methane and carbon monoxide gas in the production gas increased when catalysts were used. Fractions of hydrogen, methane and carbon monoxide gas were increased with increasing temperature. The highest hydrogen yield was obtained with sodium carbonate catalyst.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.733-742
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• 2022

Hydrogen fuel cell propulsion ships are emerging to respond to the recently strengthened carbon emission regulations in the international shipping sector. Methanol can be stored in a liquid state at normal pressure and temperature, and has the advantage of lower reforming temperature compared to other fuels. In this study, the optimal operating point of the methanol steam reforming system was derived by changing the Steam Carbon Ratio (SCR) from 0.10 to 3.00. Results showed that In terms of methanol conversion rate and hydrogen yield, the larger the SCR is the better, but in terms of system efficiency, it is most advantageous to operate at SCR 0.70 in Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) mode and SCR 0.80 in Pd membrane mode. Through this study, it was found that the optimal SCR in the reformer and the entire system including the reformer may be different, which indicates that the optimum operating point may be different depending on the change of the system configuration.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2018

Fuel cells are used to generate electricity with a reformer. In particular, methanol has various advantages among the fuels for reformer. Methanol steam reformer devices can efficiently supply hydrogen to PEM fuel cell. This study investigated the optimal operation conditions of a methanol steam reforming process. For this purpose, aspen HYSYS was used for the optimization of reforming process. The optimal operating condition could be designed by setting independent variables such as temperature, pressure and steam to carbon ratio (SCR). The optimal temperature and steam to carbon ratio were $250-270^{\circ}C$ and 1.3-1.5, respectively. It is advantageous to operate at a pressure of 15-20 barg, considering the performance of the hydrogen purifier. In addition, a heat exchange network was designed to supply heat constantly to reformer through the latent heat of steam.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.94-100
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• 2016

Hydrogen production via steam reforming of bio-oil from algal biomass over fast pyrolysis with commercial catalysts was carried out. Aqueous bio-oil obtained by phase separation from a crude oil over fast pyrolysis was used as a reactant and comparison studies for activity over different catalysts (FCR-4-02, POS-7, Cat. A, RUA), reaction temperature, and steam/carbon (S/C) ratios were performed. Experimental results showed that different catalytic activities were observed with different S/C ratios and catalyst composition and the highest hydrogen yield of 70% was obtained with a POS-7 catalyst at a S/C ratio of 10 and 1073 K.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.412-418
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• 2010

Steam reforming of n-hexadecane, a major component of diesel over Ni-based hydrotalcite-like catalyst was carried out at $900^{\circ}C$ at atmospheric pressure with space velocity of $10,000h^{-1}$ and feed molar ratio of steam/carbon=3.0. Ni-based hydrotalcite catalyst was prepared by a solid phase crystallization (spc) method and characterized by $N_2$-physisorption, CO chemisorption, TPR., XRD, and TEM techniques. It was found that spc Ni/MgAl catalyst showed higher catalytic stability and inhibition of carbon formation than Ni/$\gamma-Al_2O_3$ catalyst under the tested conditions. The results suggest that the modified spc-Ni/MgAl catalyst after optimization may be applied for the SR reaction of diesel.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.209-219
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• 2019

Methanol is a liquid fuel which could also be produced from renewable energy sources and has appreciably high energy density. In this work, we investigated the application of $Ce_{0.9}Gd_{0.1}O_{2-x}$ supported Cu and Ni catalysts for hydrogen production via methanol steam reforming. Catalysts were synthesized by solution combustion synthesis. The prepared catalysts with various active materials and Cu loading amounts were tested in a reactor at $200-300^{\circ}C$, 0-5 barg range and steam to methanol molar ratio was 1.5. The catalytic properties of Cu and Ni were compared, and the catalytic performance was shown to depend on the amounts of metal loading and operating conditions such as reaction temperature and pressure.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.749-760
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• 2022

An efficient computational fluid dynamics model was proposed for simulating microchannel-type steam/methane reformers with thin washcoat catalyst layers. In this model, by using the effectiveness factor correlations, the overall reaction rate that occurs in the washcoat catalyst layer could be accurately estimated without performing the detailed calculation of heat transfer, mass transfer, and reforming reactions therein. The accuracy of the proposed model was validated by solving a microchannel-type reformer, once by fully considering the complex steam/methane reforming (SMR) process inside the washcoat layer and again by simplifying the SMR calculation using the effectiveness factor correlations. Finally, parametric studies were conducted to investigate the effects of operating conditions on the SMR performance.

• 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.