Inorganic membrane reactor for hydrogen production through bio-ethanol reforming processes

Today, hydrogen is considered as the most viable energy carrier useful for many applications and, particularly, for fuel cells supplying. Taking into account the environmental contamination caused by the exploitation of derived of fossil fuels, hydrogen production from ethanol coming from biomass as a renewable source could constitute an interesting and strategic opportunity. This chapter describes the possibility of producing hydrogen from ethanol reforming processes through inorganic membrane reactors. The latter are proposed and described because useful to perform reactions limited by the equilibrium conversion because of the hydrogen selective separation capability of the inorganic membranes. Both benefits and drawbacks of the inorganic membrane reactor technology are examined and, when applied to reforming reactions, their performances such as hydrogen yield, hydrogen recovery, ethanol conversion and so on are emphasized and qualitatively compared to those of the conventional systems. Furthermore, a short overview from the open specialized literature on the most representative scientific results concerning ethanol reforming processes performed by inorganic membrane reactor technology is also given and discussed. © 2012 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.