Electrically heated monolithic catalyst for in-situ hydrogen production by methanol steam reforming

Abstract

Electrification of conventionally combustion-heated reactors has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions and provide a flexible and compact heat supply. In this paper, multi-segment helical FeCrAl substrates were arranged in tube-shell form with insulation by honeycomb ceramics to obtain the electrically heated monolithic catalyst (EHMC) substrate, followed by thermal treatment and catalyst deposition to obtain the EHMC. The start-up and catalytic performance of the EHMC at different reaction conditions were studied experimentally. The results showed that the desired temperature of 275 °C could be reached in 29 s with a uniform temperature distribution by supplying a current of 2 A in air atmosphere. Compared with the commercial granular catalyst under external heating condition, the EHMC showed better catalytic activity due to higher methanol conversion and similar CO concentration at low reaction temperature. Furthermore, when the methanol conversion was 90%, the GHSV of the EHMC was 5.54 times that of the commercial granular catalyst, indicating that the EHMC can operate at higher GHSV owing to the enhanced mass and heat transfer ability.