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Total energy requirement for hydrogen production reactor using various porous media materials
Author(s)
Aungkharuengrattana, Waroht
Sesuk, Thanathon
Charochrojkul, Sumittra
Date Issued
January 1, 2015
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
In a hydrogen production reactor, combustion of LPG was used as a heat source for ethanol steam reforming. For such purpose, the operating temperature was required to be around 700-900 °C along the entire height of the reactor. Various types of porous media materials were used as a heat transfer media, i.e. 25mm ceramic saddles, random size bio-filter media from MTEC, ceramic foam, and ceramic balls. The objective of this study was to obtain the practical amount of total energy input, to compare with theoretical calculation which can achieve the required temperature of ethanol steam reforming for the hydrogen production. From our experiments, 13.20 kW of energy was needed to fulfill the requirement of the reactor, while only 2.49 kW was expected from theoretical calculation. Most energy loss was due mainly to: 1) heat loss at the top of the reactor where the metal part was directly exposed to the environment, 2) a large amount of energy loss at the furnace stack and, 3) insufficient mixing at the early stage of combustion at the bottom of the furnace as noticed by high CO concentration in flue gas. The porous media material has a significant effect on temperature distribution and energy consumption. The results show that the use of ceramic saddles as porous media consume more energy than the ceramic foam and the bio-filter media mixed with ceramic saddles during the start-up period of the reactor.
Citation
Key Engineering Materials, 659, 242-246, 2015