Dynamic modelling of methanol steam reforming to hydrogen in a packed bed reactor for shipboard fuel cells

Hydrogen economy is spreading across the maritime sector in response to increasingly stringent regulations for shipping emissions. The challenging on-board hydrogen logistics are often mitigated with hydrogen carriers such as methanol. Research on methanol reforming to hydrogen for fuel cell feed is conducted mostly in steady state, overlooking dynamic reactor operation and its effects on the power production system. Forced reactor operations induce fluctuations of CO content in the reformate potentially harmful to the PEM fuel cell, and drops in methanol conversion causing inefficient operation. In present research, simulations with a physical 2D unsteady model of a packed bed methanol steam reforming reactor resulted in methanol conversion drop durations of up to a minute. Additionally, temporary increases of CO content up to 112% were observed. Throughput ramp ups most notably impact the conversion, while ramp downs negatively affect selectivity. The investigation on reactor geometry concludes that larger tube diameters increase transient time and CO spikes, while they decrease with reactor length. Amplified unsteady effects are also observed with larger changes in input process variables. The results imply that heat transfer rate to the reactor are most often the detrimental factor for transient effects and durations in practice. Following this work, inclusion of realistic heating methods is recommended, instead of uniform tube temperatures used in present simulations. Heating system characteristics are necessary for realistic evaluation of the methanol reformer constraint on fuel cell feed demand in fully integrated systems.