Simulation of Sorption-enhanced Steam Reforming of Methanol for Hydrogen Production

This document reports on the study and research on the final year project entitled: Simulation of sorption-enhanced steam reforming of methanol for hydrogen production. The purpose of this simulation project is to study on the effects of different isothermal temperature and different S/M molar feed ratio towards maximizing hydrogen, H2 and minimizing Carbon monoxide, CO concentration in presence of Carbon dioxide, CO2 removal reaction. Currently, the steam reforming of methanol produced CO as byproduct. While, presence of CO in reformate gas can be poisonous towards cell electrode of Proton exchange membrane (PEM). Furthermore, high purity of H2 produced will increase the fuel cell’s durability and efficiency. In this study, the adsorption rate of CO2 has been taken into consideration. Three main reactions is being study under this project together with CO2 removal reaction mechanism. The Peppley kinetic reaction model has been choose to running this simulation and getting the final results. This project heavily involved in using mathematical software which is MATLABTM. The results shows that at high temperature and high molar feed rate ratio (S/M) more hydrogen, H2 is produced and reduction in CO concentration. The presence of CO2 removal reaction significantly increases the purity of H2 and reduced the amount of CO the zero level. Therefore, more study is required for better understanding in order to achieve an optimum production of H2 for PEM reactor.