Experimental Study of a 1 kW Methanol Steam Reformer

• Main Authors: Li-Wei Kuo, 郭力瑋
• Other Authors: Jyh-shyong Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/04685449058836580553

碩士 === 大同大學 === 化學工程學系(所) === 94 === In this study, a 1kW methanol steam reformer including an evaporating system was set up to carry out the experimental study of the methanol steam reforming reaction adopting the commercial MDC-3 catalyst. The uniform design (UD) method and the sequential pseudo-uniform method (SPUD) method were adopted to locate the inputs of the experiments (the mole ratio of [H2O]/[CH3OH] γ, the methanol molar feed rate , and the reacting temperature T). On the basis of the overall mass balance, the component balance for each species involved in the reactions can be obtained via the density measurement of the input and output liquid fluid flows. The most acceptable optimizing operating condition for running the 1kW constructed steam reformer was achieved by the method of contracting the promising operating region. Based on the proposed heuristic algorithm and the given objective function for achieving high yield of hydrogen and low catalyst deactivation, the most acceptable optimizing operating condition γ = 1, T = 557 (K), =0.383 (mol/min) was obtained through a total 39 experiments. By this way, a model-free approach to optimizing an unknown process was developed and proven to be applicable in this experimental reactor system.