Boreskov Institute of Catalysis of the Siberian Branch of Russian ...

OP-IV-5MODELING OF HYDROGEN PRODUCTION BY STEAMREFORMING OF ETHANOL IN PACKED BED AND WALL-COATEDREACTORSL. Hernández, V. KafarovDepartment of Chemical Engineering, Universidad Industrial de Santander,Cra 27 Cl 9, Fax: +57-7-6350540, Bucaramanga, Colombia. e-mail: cisyc@uis.edu.coIntroductionNowadays, it is of reach interest the accomplishment of research activities to findalternative fuels and develop more efficient equipment for energy production because of theextended use of fossil fuels has been a determinant factor on several environmental pollutionproblems. The hydrogen is a promissory fuel by its clean and efficient combustion. Itsproblems of handling and storage can be solved using ethanol as a chemical source.Moreover, ethanol is possible to produce in large quantities from biomass, which does arenewable fuel. In recent years, many researchers have devoted their efforts to developcatalysts for steam reforming of ethanol to produce hydrogen for use in fuel cells [1-6]. Also,it has been developed kinetic models for some catalysts [7-11] and simulated its behavior inpacked bed reactors [12]. In this work, with the aim of to find a kind of reactor more efficientfor hydrogen production, a comparison between packed bed and wall-coated reactors bymathematical simulation was made.Model descriptionKinetic modelThe catalyst selected in this case was a Ni(II)-Al(III) lamellar double hydroxidedeveloped by Mas V. et al. [13] for which a preliminary kinetic model was developed. In thismodel was taken into account a reaction scheme of two reactions for ethanol steam reformingand used a power-law-type rate expression.Phenomenological modelThe software FEMLAB® 2.3 was used to simulate packed bed and wall-coated reactorswith diameter of 4 mm and catalyst coating thickness of 0,1 mm (for wall-coated reactor) bymeans of a 2D heterogeneous axisymmetric model. Energy and mass balances for eachcomponent both in gaseous and catalyst phase were made. The operational conditions for thesimulation at reactor inlet were: temperature 923 K and volumetric flow 0.2 ml/h (which wasa mixture 1:6 molar ethanol/water) at atmospheric pressure. The reactor wall temperature wasassumed constant and equal to inlet value in both cases.148