Flow-Rate and Reaction-Temperature Effects Upon Ethanol Steam Reforming With Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃

The authors reveal the dominant chemical reactions and the optimum conditions, supposing the design of ethanol steam-reforming reactors. Specifically, experiments are conducted for Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃ catalyst, together with those for Ru/Al₂O₃ catalyst for reference. Using a household-use-scale reactor with well-controlled temperature distributions, the authors compare experimental results with chemical-equilibrium theories. As a result, the Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃ catalyst shows rather high performance at low values of reaction temperature T. This suggests that the Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃ catalyst promotes the ethanol-steam-reforming and water-gas-shift reactions, but does not promote the methanation reaction. Furthermore, the authors have researched the influence of liquid-hourly space velocity LHSV upon the ethanol conversion X_C2H5OH in the range of LHSV from 0.05 to 1.40h⁻¹, S/C = 3.0 and T = 420K, 470K and 520K, and the influence of LHSV upon concentrations such as C_H2, C_CO2, C_CO and C_CH4 in the range of LHSV from 0.05 to 1.20h⁻¹, at S/C = 3.0 and T = 470K. In addition, the authors have proposed a new and simple method to recover the catalyst performance.