Thermodynamic Evaluation of Hydrogen Production Via Bioethanol Steam Reforming

In this article, a thermodynamic analysis for bioethanol steam reforming for hydrogen production is presented. Bioethanol is a newly proposed renewable energy carrier mainly produced from biomass fermentation. Reforming of bioethanol provides a promising method for hydrogen production from renewable resources. Steam reforming of ethanol (SRE) takes place under the action of a metal catalyst capable of breaking C-C bonds into smaller molecules. A large domain for the water/bioethanol molar ratio as well as the temperature and average pressure has been used in the present work. The interval of investigated temperature was 100-800 degrees C, the pressure was in the range of 1-10 bar and the molar ratio was between 3-25. The variations of gaseous species concentration e. g. H-2, CO, CO2, CH4 were analyzed. The concentrations of the main products (H-2 and CO) at lower temperature are smaller than the ones at higher temperature due to by-products formation (methane, carbon dioxide, acetylene etc.). The concentration of H-2 obtained in the process using high molar ratio (>20) is higher than the one at small molar ratio (near stoichiometric). When the pressure is increased the hydrogen concentration decreases. The results were compared with literature data for validation purposes.