A simulation study of a bioethanol‐solar‐reforming system for proton‐exchange membrane fuel cell home cogeneration system

The energy supply characteristic of a proton‐exchange membrane fuel cell for houses is strongly influenced in a hydrogen supply unit. Therefore, a bioethanol reforming system (FBSR) with a sunlight heat source is developed as a potential fuel supply system for distributed fuel cells. However, the temperature distribution of a catalyst layer in the reactor is not stable under conditions of unstable solar radiation and unstable outside air temperature; as a result, it is thought that the inversion ratio (the percentage of hydrogen obtained from ethanol) of a reforming reaction will decrease. In this paper, heat transmission analysis was used in the catalyst layer of the reformer of FBSR, and the fundamental performance of FBSR was investigated. Fluctuations of the solar insolation over a short period of time affect the hydrogen‐generating rate of FBSR. Moreover, the amount of hydrogen production of FBSR was simulated using meteorological data from a day in March and a day in August in a cold region (Sapporo in Japan). In this research, the relation between the collected area of a solar collector and the energy supply to an individual house was obtained. The reactor has the geometry of a cylinder and it is filled up with the spherical reforming catalysts that are several millimeters in diameter. The heat collected with solar collector B is transferred to the heat‐supply surface of the reactor, thus heating the catalyst layer.