An experimental study on bio-ethanol steam reforming in a catalytic membrane reactor. Part II: Reaction pressure, sweep factor and WHSV effects

A catalytic Pd–Ag membrane reactor has been packed with a Co–Al 2O 3 catalyst to perform the ethanol steam reforming reaction using a simulated bio-ethanol mixture (H 2O/C 2H 5OH feed molar ratio = 18.7/1). In Part I of this work, low hydrogen recovery (≤30%) and CO-free hydrogen yield (≤20%) were obtained. In this second study the influence of higher pressure and sweep-gas flow rate was studied in order to improve the membrane reactor performances in terms of higher ethanol conversion, CO-free hydrogen yield and hydrogen recovery. The counter-current sweep-gas flow configuration was used for studying the effect of the reaction pressure and the sweep factor on the reaction system, while the co-current flow configuration was also considered for analysing the weight hourly space velocity effect. Moreover, a comparison with a traditional reactor working at the same MR operating conditions was also realized. As best results, the membrane reactor showed 100% ethanol conversion, 95.0% CO-free hydrogen recovery and ∼60.0% CO-free hydrogen yield, operating at 400 °C and 3.0 (abs) bar.