Effect of Operating Conditions on Hydrogen Production in Butanol Reforming: A Review

Abstract

The development of alternative sources of energy is becoming important in this era of diminishing petroleum reserves and increased environmental awareness. Hydrogen production from biomass has attracted great interest because of the potential application in fuel cells and it is considered to be clean energy source. Biomass derived from forest or agricultural residues, energy crops or organic waste streams could partly replace fossil fuels as part of a biorefinery strate gy. Such biomass has the potential to be processed for synthesis gas production in order to generate chemicals or fuel. Bio - oil via pyrolysis route can be produced from this bio - mass. Bio - oil produced via this route has number of functional groups like aci ds, ketones, aldehydes, alcohols etc. Model compounds have been widely used in order to simplify the process and gain further insights into bio - oil and the steam reforming of its water - soluble fraction. Butanol is considered to be one of the compound of bi o - oil. Moreover, n - butanol can be produced by fermentation from sugar beet, sugar cane, corn, wheat and potentially lignocellulosic biomass. Using butanol as a source of producing hydrogen is a good possibility. Steam reforming is a promising way to utili ze the butanol aqueous solution to produce hydrogen. In comparison with other substrates (e.g. ethanol and methanol), n - butanol exhibits a series of advantages, including higher hydrogen content than ethanol and methanol ; lower vapor pressure and greater t olerance to water; and furthermore, n - butanol can be used directly in existing fuel distr ibution pipelines. Hydrogen can be produced from n - butanol via steam reforming, dry reforming, partial oxidation and oxidative steam reforming reactions.