Sorption Enhanced Steam Reformingof Biomass-Derived Compounds:Process and Material

Abstract

An attempt has been made to develop a flexible system to produce very pure H2 with high efficiency from renewable bio-based recourses. First, such model compounds as ethanol, glycerol, sorbitol and glucose, have been tested for H2 production via sorption enhanced steam reforming (SESR) over Co-Ni/hydrotalcite-like (HTls) derived catalyst and CaO-based CO2 acceptor. The experimental results show that all of feedstocks, even heavy feedstocks, were able to offer high H2 purity (97.3~99.1%) and yield at low steam to carbon (S/C = 1.3~6) ratio in comparison to the corresponding steam reforming process. In addition, the studied system also presents encouraging potential for improvement of energy efficiency. Chemical looping combustion (CLC) was coupled to the cyclic multi-step SESR process to assist the acceptor regeneration by using multifunctional Pd/Co-Ni/HTls catalyst. With coupling of CLC to SESR, H2 concentration in the gas effluent of the SESR reactions was still higher than 95 mol% on a dry basis. The assembled CLC-SESR process has inherent high efficiency in H2 production.