International Journal of Photoenergy
Volume 2010 (2010), Article ID 294217, 9 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2010/294217
Characteristics of Carbon Monoxide Oxidization in Rich Hydrogen by Mesoporous Silica with TiO2 Photocatalyst
1Division of Mechanical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Mie University, 1577 Kurimamachiya-cho, Tsu 514-8507, Japan
2School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia
Received 17 August 2010; Accepted 9 November 2010
Academic Editor: Jimmy Yu
Copyright © 2010 Akira Nishimura et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Hydrogen (H2) is normally used as the fuel to power polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC). However, the power generation performance of PEFC is harmed by the carbon monoxide (CO) in the H2 that is often produced frommethane (CH4). The purpose of this study is to investigate the experimental conditions in order to improve the CO oxidization performance of mesoporous silica loaded with TiO2. The impact of loading ratio of TiO2 and initial concentration ratio of O2 to CO on CO oxidization performance is investigated. As a result, the optimum loading ratio of TiO2 and initial concentration ratio of O2 to CO were 20 wt% and 4 vol%, respectively, under the experimental conditions. Under this optimumexperimental condition, the CO in rich H2 in the reactor can be completely eliminated from initial 12000 ppmV after UV light illumination of 72 hours.