Comparative analysis of ethanol-steam and -autothermal reforming for hydrogen production using Aspen Plus

A comparative analysis of the ethanol reforming concerning steam and autothermal reformer was conducted to the evaluate parametric conditions for a hydrogen-rich product stream. The present simulation study includes a first attempt to report the optimal parametric conditions for ethanol-steam and -autothermal reformer. Various operating parameters, including temperature, pressure, steam-to-ethanol ratio, and oxygen-to-ethanol ratio, were considered in this analysis. The result illustrated that the hydrogen mole fraction increased with rising temperature in the steam reforming of ethanol, but it remained constant beyond reaction temperature of 750 degrees C. On the other hand, as the pressure and the steam-to-ethanol ratio increased, the H-2 mole fraction decreased. Furthermore, with an enriched oxygen-to-ethanol ratio reactant stream, H-2 and CO contents in the product effluent were found to be reduced in the autothermal ethanol reforming. The results showed that an autothermal reforming strategy under optimized parameters (temperature of 600 degrees C, steam-to-ethanol ratio of 5, and oxygen-to-ethanol ratio of 0.6) produced the maximum H-2 yield (3.78 kmol/h) per mole of ethanol. It was observed that introducing O-2 into the reformer helped reduce the amount of energy required for the steam reforming reaction. This study indicates that, although considerable work has been conducted on reforming catalysts development, simulation-based studies are still useful to help understand the overall process behaviour without undertaking laborious, high-cost involved time-consuming experiments.