Process development of hydrogenous gas production for PEFC from biogas

A laboratory-scale gas processor that integrates four successive catalytic reactions: steam reforming of methane, high- and low-temperature water gas shifts and selective oxidation of carbon monoxide, was designed and tested in this study to produce hydrogen-rich gas with CO<10 ppm from a clean model biogas having a constant molar ratio of CH4/CO2=1.5:1.0 for a 50-W class polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) stack. All tests to determine the optimum operating condition of each of the reactions were conducted over commercial catalysts in their manufactured shapes and sizes in order to obtain data practically valuable for scale-up of the processor. A 7-h continuous test was also finally conducted to confirm the stabilities of the catalysts and reliability of the processor. The resulting data has shown that the proposed processor is indeed functional to produce a hydrogen-rich gas with 60–70% H2 of about 1.6 l/min at PEFC-fuel standard from the clean model biogas.