Selection of appropriate primary fuel for hydrogen production for different fuel cell types: Comparison between decomposition and steam reforming W. Khaodee a , S. Wongsakulphasatch b , W. Kiatkittipong b , A. Arpornwichanop a , N. Laosiripojana c , S. Assabumrungrat a, * a Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand b Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Technology, Silapakorn University, Nakhon Phathom 73000, Thailand c The Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok 10140, Thailand article info Article history: Received 17 December 2010 Received in revised form 6 March 2011 Accepted 20 March 2011 Available online 22 April 2011 Keywords: Gibbs free energy minimization Decomposition Steam reforming Hydrocarbon Energy self-sustained operation abstract In order to select a proper hydrogen production system being compatible with fuel cell, a variety of interesting primary fuels such as light hydrocarbons and alcohols were tested in the decomposition (D) and the steam reforming (SR) processes by thermodynamic approach. The reaction performances of the systems particularly under thermally self- sustained condition were focused on. To obtain self-sustained condition, two approaches, splitting feed and splitting gas product streams to the burner for heat supply to endothermic hydrogen processor, are investigated. Our results revealed that splitting gas product gave higher carbon capture than splitting feed but lower in hydrogen yield. As expected, steam reforming provides higher hydrogen production, however, lower in hydrogen purity and carbon capture comparing to decomposition process. By considering primary fuels, D-alcohols could be applied to MCFC and SOFC, among these, D-C 2 H 5 OH was preferable because it gives the highest ratio of H 2 /CO. For D-light hydrocarbon systems, which is operated at 1100 K providing 97% hydrogen purity, is suitable to be connected to MCFC, SOFC and also PEMFC. Copyright ª 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Hydrogen is an important feedstock for various applications such as fuel cell, hydrotreating, hydrogenation, and produc- tion of ammonia or methanol [1]. One of the promising hydrogen utilization is to apply to fuel cell for mainly gener- ating electricity and heat. There are several types of fuel cells that are commonly used, including polymeric electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC), and solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). However, the hydrogen supplied to low temperature fuel cell such as PEMFC is typically limited under condition of high purity of hydrogen with considerably low concentration of carbon monoxide (CO). Its acceptable value that the active sites on the anode of PEMFC can be tolerable and unharmed from poisonous gaseous CO is around 10e50 ppm [2]. On the other hand, CO can be performed as another fuel source in high-temperature fuel cell i.e. MCFC and SOFC. * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ66 2 2186868; fax: þ66 2 2186877. E-mail address: suttichai.a@chula.ac.th (S. Assabumrungrat). Available at www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he international journal of hydrogen energy 36 (2011) 7696 e7706 0360-3199/$ e see front matter Copyright ª 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2011.03.123