Electromagnetically induced in situ catalytic methanol steam reforming for hydrogen production

Lei Shi, Jiajun Chen, Ruibin Ning, Xinyi Ji, Zhao Sun, Tian Zhou and Zhiqiang Sun

Energy, 2025, vol. 330, issue C

Abstract: The tremendous influence of human activity on the Earth's climate, as well as the continued increase in global energy demand, have emphasized the importance of developing clean energy sources. Among them, hydrogen is a flexible and attractive energy carrier, as well as an important and widely used chemical. Methanol steam reforming is considered an ideal process for hydrogen production due to its superior reaction performance. However, the yield of hydrogen is limited by heat transport limitations in conventional externally heated reactors. In this study, an innovative electromagnetically induced in situ catalytic reactor was designed to enhance hydrogen production efficiency. Electromagnetic-thermal-chemical-flow multi-physical coupling models were established using the finite element method and experimentally validated. Under operating conditions of 20 A and 3000 kHz, the methanol conversion and carbon dioxide selectivity reached 99.3 % and 95.5 %, respectively. The energy efficiency of the hydrogen production process was analyzed, with the highest efficiency reaching 38.57 %. Furthermore, simulation-based extrapolations suggest that increasing the scale of hydrogen production can lower the cost per normal cubic meters of hydrogen. This study addresses the limitations of traditional hydrogen production units, such as long cold start times and large heat transfer resistance, which can advance the development of more efficient hydrogen energy technologies.

Keywords: Hydrogen production; Electromagnetic induction; In situ catalytic reaction; Reactor optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544225024843
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:330:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225024843

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.136842

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().