Kinetic and computational modeling of methanol steam reforming

FUEL 186

CA. Bellemare-Davis, davis@me.queensu.ca1, JG. Pharoah, pharoah@me.queensu.ca1, and Kunal Karan, kkaran@dbra.com2. (1) Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Queen's-RMC Fuel Cell Research Centre, Queen's University, McLaughlin Hall, 130 Stuart St., Kingston, ON K7L3N6, Canada, (2) Department of Chemical Engineering, Queen's-RMC Fuel Cell Research Centre, Queen's University, Dupuis Hall, 19 Division St., Kingston, ON K7L3N6, Canada
Porous, plug-flow reactors are commonly used in developing a chemical kinetic models by experiment, but it is difficult to ensure that transport effects in these reactors are negligible except through adherence to established design criteria. Through computational simulation, it has been shown that the steam reforming of methanol constitutes an exception to the popular Mears criteria for plug-flow reactor design. An attempt has been made to quantify the error resulting in the Peppley model for the steam reforming of methanol, and an optimization method to retroactively correct this error through computational modelling is has been proposed. This method may be generalized to assist in the design, evaluation, and correction of similar experiments.
 

Fuel Processing for Hydrogen Production
8:25 AM-12:05 PM, Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Boston Park Plaza -- Berkeley Rm, Oral

Division of Fuel Chemistry

The 234th ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007