A novel monolithic microreactor for producing hydrogen in high safety

Abstract

Current hydrogen production microreactors typically use laminated cavity plates for assembly. However, as the number of cavity plates increases, the number of graphite sealing sheets also rises, leading to a higher risk of gas leakage. To address this issue, this study proposes a monolithic microreactor manufactured using additive manufacturing process. The hydrogen production performance of the microreactor is analyzed through simulation. The results indicate that the porosity of the reaction support and the reaction temperature are positively correlated with methanol conversion, H₂ flow rate, and CO selectivity. In contrast, the injection rate of the methanol-water mixture is negatively correlated with methanol conversion and CO selectivity, but positively correlated with H₂ flow rate. Compared to microreactors scaled up in size, those with an increased number of reaction supports demonstrate superior hydrogen production performance, with methanol conversion and H₂ flow rate improved by 1.4 % and 2.5 %, respectively, while CO selectivity decreases by 2.38 %. Compared with traditional microreactor, the sealing performance and the flow rate of reaction product of monolithic microreactor increases by 280.1 % and 31.9 %, respectively.