A study on steam reforming of methanol in a Pd-based membrane reactor fabricated by surfactant induced electroless plating

Steam reforming of methanol was studied in Pd-based stainless steel microporous membrane reactor. The Pd-composite membrane was fabricated on microporous stainless steel tubular support by novel electroless deposition technique in which surfactants were used to enhance the Pd deposition and its surface morphology. Single and mixed gases were used to measure the H₂-perm-selectivity. The membrane-reactor was configured in shell-tube structure. The reaction was conducted on the shell side and the permeate hydrogen was taken out in the tube side. The reaction was performed over commercially available Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃ catalyst. A two-dimensional, pseudo-homogeneous membrane-reactor model was developed to examine the steam-methanol reforming reactions in a Pd-based membrane reactor. The model can handle steam-methanol reforming reactions under non-membrane condition and equilibrium reaction conversions. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the AIChE Annual Meeting (Salt Lake City, UT 11/4-9/2007).