Abstract

The interest in hydrogen production for fuel cell applications is steadily increasing due to environmental and national security concerns. The overall goal of this research is to discover and derive the necessary scientific and engineering information to design and optimize a compact and efficient methanol reformer capable of producing hydrogen for the fuel cells of fuel cell vehicles. For the design or operation purpose of the methanol reformer, it is needed to understand not only the reaction mechanism and kinetics of every catalytic reaction involved but also the optimization of this reaction/reactor system. As a strategic approach, we focus on realistic simulation and extensive optimization work using data from commercially available catalysts and simple kinetics.