Methanol Reforming Over PT Catalysts for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

An experimental investigation on hydrogen generation from methanol using Pt catalysts is presented in this paper. Methanol has the advantages of high energy density, high reforming activity and low CO selectivity at low temperatures. At present Cu-based catalysts are widely used for methanol reforming. But they are pyrophoric and thermally unstable, which causes issues in operating a real system. Pt catalysts dispersed on cerium oxides were tested for methanol reforming to resolve the problems. Steam reforming over Pt/cerium oxides showed the low conversion ratio less than 90% and the high CO concentration of about 15% at 400 °C. Autothermal reforming by adding O₂ rapidly promoted the conversion of methanol and reduced the concentration of CO at lower temperature. Increasing the amount of dispersed Pt, the range of 0.5–3.0 wt%, shifted the reforming trends towards lower temperature and decreased the concentration of CO. To achieve more production rate within a given catalyst bed, catalysts coated monolithic honeycomb is prepared. It showed very high conversion at space velocities of up to 60,000/h.