Design, fabrication and testing of a catalytic microreactor for hydrogen production

A catalytic microreactor for hydrogen production was fabricated by anisotropic wet etching of photosensitive glass, which enables it to be a structure with high tight tolerance and high aspect ratio. As a reactor structure, a microchannel was used for improving heat and mass transfer in the reactor. The primary fuel source is methanol for a mobile device. Endothermic catalytic steam reforming of methanol was chosen for producing gaseous hydrogen. The Cu-based catalyst, Cu/ZnO, was prepared by the co-precipitation method and coated on the surface of the microchannel for methanol steam reforming. An overall microfabrication process was established for a MEMS-based catalytic microreactor. The fabricated reactor has a volume of 1.8 cm3 including the volume of the reaction chamber 0.3 cm3 and produced dry reformate with high hydrogen content, 73%. The hydrogen flow was 4.16 ml min−1, which can generate a power output of 350 mWe for a fuel cell.The page numbers of this article were corrected on 24 July 2006. The corrected electronic version is identical to the print version.