Investigation of the Water Gas Shift from Reforming Gas for CO Removal

Hydrogen as an energy carrier in fuel cell offers perhaps the largest potential benefits of reduced emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases. The generation of high-purity hydrogen from hydrocarbon fuels is essential for efficient operation of fuel cell. Reduction of carbon monoxide to an acceptable level of 10ppm involves high temperature and low temperature water gas shift (WGS), followed by selective oxidation of residual carbon monoxide. The WGS reactor was designed and tested in this study to produce hydrogen-rich gas with CO to less than 5000 ppm. In the water gas shift operation, gas emerges from the reformer is taken through a high temperature shift (HTS) catalyst to reduce the CO concentration to about 2 similar to 4 % followed to about 5000 ppm via a low temperature shift (LTS) catalyst.