Micro Channel Structure With Strengthened Rough Surface in an Ethanol Reforming Hydrogen Generator

The combination of the hydrogen production from ethanol and microchannel technology can provide a portable hydrogen resource for fuel cell, which will effectively solve the energy and environment problem. This paper introduces a new surface structure — microchannel structure with strengthened rough surface (MCSWSRS) which has a feature of strongly transferring heat in microchannel. The MCSWSRS depends not only the dimension effect of this structure but also the special rough surface to strengthen heat transmission, so MCSWSRS transfers more heat than the smooth structure. Based on the heat strengthening transmission mechanism of MCSWSRS and the microchannel theory, a new kind of microchannel reactor was built and its heat strengthening transmission property has been analyzed. When the reacting temperature of microchannel reactor was 330°C and catalyst was Ni/La₂O₃, properties of MCSWSRS were experimented in the system of hydrogen from steam reforming of ethanol. The experimentation shows that hydrogen production efficiency of this microchannel reactor with MCSWSRS was 9% higher than that of the fixed bed tube reactor under the same reacting conditions. The results show that the MCSWSRS in reactor is feasible and advantageous in practice.