The regulation effect of methane and hydrogen on the emission characteristics of ammonia/air combustion in a model combustor

Ammonia, made up of 17.8% hydrogen, has attracted a lot of attention in combustion community due to its zero carbon emission as a fuel in gas turbines. However, ammonia combustion still faces some challenges including the weak combustion and sharp NOx emissions which discourage its application. It was demonstrated that the combustion intensity of ammonia/air flame can be enhanced through adding active fuels like methane and hydrogen, while the NOx emission issue will emerge in the meantime. This study investigates regulation effect of methane and hydrogen on the emission characteristics of ammonia/air flame in a gas turbine combustor. The instantaneous OH profile and global emissions at the combustion chamber outlet are measured with Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) technique and the Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), respectively. The flames are also simulated by large eddy simulation to further reveal physical and chemical processes of the emissions formation. Results show that for NH₃/air flames, the emissions behavior of the gas turbine combustor is similar to the calculated one-dimensional flames. Moreover, the NOx emissions and the unburned NH₃ can be simultaneously controlled to a proper value at the equivalence ratio (φ) of approximate 1.1. The variation of NO and NO₂ with φ for NH₃/H₂/air flames and NH₃/CH₄/air flames at blending ratio (Z_f) of 0.1 are similar to the NH₃/air flames, with the peak moving towards rich condition. This indicates that the NH₃/air flame can be regulated through adding a small amount of active fuels without increasing the NOx emission level. However, when Z_f = 0.3, we observe a clear large NOx emission and CO for NH₃/CH₄/air flames, indicating H₂ is a better choice on the emission control. The LES results show that NO and OH radicals exhibit a general positive correlation. And the temperature plays a secondary role in promoting NOx formation comparing with CH₄/air flame.     

Comparison of the explosion characteristics of hydrogen,propane, and methane clouds at the stoichiometric concentrations

Numerical simulations were performed to study explosion characteristics of the unconfined clouds. The examined cloud volume was 4 m × 4 m × 2 m. The build-in obstruction inside the cloud was the 8 × 8 × 4 perpendicular rod array. The obstacle volume blockage ratio was 0.74. Three gases were considered: hydrogen/air at the stoichiometric concentrations, propane/air at the stoichiometric concentrations, and methane/air at the stoichiometric concentrations. The hydrogen/air cloud explosion has higher peak overpressure and the overpressure rises locally at the nearby region of the cloud boundary. The explosion overpressures of both methane/air and propane/air are lower, compared with the hydrogen/air, and decreases with distance. The maximum peak dynamic pressure is reached beyond the original cloud, which is clearly different from the explosion peak overpressure tends. Furthermore, dynamic pressure of a cloud explosion is of the same order as overpressure. The explosion flame region for the hydrogen/air cloud is approximately 1.25 times of the original width of the cloud. The explosion flame regions for propane/air or methane/air clouds are approximately 1.4 times of the original width of the cloud. Unlike the explosion overpressures, the explosion temperatures have little difference between the three mixture examined in this study. The higher energy of explosive mixture generates a high temperature hazard effect, but the higher energy of explosive mixture may not generate a larger overpressure hazard effect in a gas explosion accident.     

Experimental investigation of premixed combustion limits of hydrogen and methane additives in ammonia

In this study, a specially designed premixed combustion chamber system for ammonia-hydrogen and methane-air laminar premixed flames is introduced and the combustion limits of ammonia-hydrogen and methane-air flames are explored. The measurements obtained the blow-out limits (mixed methane: 400–700 mL/min, mixed hydrogen: 200–700 mL/min), mixing gas lean limit characteristics (mixed methane: 0–82%, mixed hydrogen: 0–37%) and lean/rich combustion characteristics (mixed methane: ? = 0.6–1.9, mixed hydrogen: ? = 0.9–3.2) of the flames. The results show that the ammonia-hydrogen-air flame has a smaller lower blow-out limit, mixing gas ratio, lean combustion limit and higher rich combustion limit, thereby proving the advantages of hydrogen as an effective additive in the combustion performance of ammonia fuel. In addition, the experiments show that increasing the initial temperature of the premixed gas can expand the lean/rich combustion limits of both the ammonia-hydrogen and ammonia-methane flames.     

Performance assesment of hydrogen and ammonia combustion with various fuels for power generators

This paper proposes the use of hydrogen and ammonia as possible fuels for power generators and to do so the combustion is modelled by using different types of fuels which are; hydrogen, gasoline, diesel, ethanol, methanol, propane, butane and natural gas to see the effects of these fuel sources on combustion. The main aim of using a clean fuel is to decrease the greenhouse emissions, and by looking at the results, the reduction in CO₂ emissions shows that blending hydrogen and ammonia will result in a reduction for the deleterious emissions occurring after combustion. The reason behind using a dual fueled system is to make use of the secondary fuel source as a combustion promoter to help increase the low flame temperatures of ammonia that causes it not to ignite when used solely. In the modelling of combustion the maximum power output is set to 3.65 kW as this is the maximum power output for the power generator used in the experimental studies. In the studies the increase of clean fuel percentage in the fuel blend cause a reduction in the performance measures as expected with the lower energy density and lower heating values that ammonia offers but the reduction in CO₂ and NO_x emissions makes it a fuel source worth using with a combustion promoter.     

A computational study on the combustion of hydrogen/methane blended fuels for a micro gas turbines

To understand the combustion performance of using hydrogen/methane blended fuels for a micro gas turbine that was originally designed as a natural gas fueled engine, the combustion characteristics of a can combustor has been modeled and the effects of hydrogen addition were investigated. The simulations were performed with three-dimensional compressible k-ε turbulent flow model and presumed probability density function for chemical reaction. The combustion and emission characteristics with a variable volumetric fraction of hydrogen from 0% to 90% were studied. As hydrogen is substituted for methane at a fixed fuel injection velocity, the flame temperatures become higher, but lower fuel flow rate and heat input at higher hydrogen substitution percentages cause a power shortage. To apply the blended fuels at a constant fuel flow rate, the flame temperatures are increased with increasing hydrogen percentages. This will benefit the performance of gas turbine, but the cooling and the NO_x emissions are the primary concerns. While fixing a certain heat input to the engine with blended fuels, wider but shorter flames at higher hydrogen percentages are found, but the substantial increase of CO emission indicates a decrease in combustion efficiency. Further modifications including fuel injection and cooling strategies are needed for the micro gas turbine engine with hydrogen/methane blended fuel as an alternative.     

Effect of hydrogen enrichment on combustion characteristics of methane swirling and non-swirling inverse diffusion flame

Influence of hydrogen addition on appearance of swirling and non-swirling inverse diffusion flame (IDF) along with emissions characteristics are investigated experimentally. The combustion characteristics including flame length, axial and radial temperature variation, and noise level are analysed for hydrogen addition in methane by mass basis for constant energy input and by volume basis for constant volumetric fuel flow rate. Hydrogen addition in methane IDF produces shorter flame by compressing entrainment zone, mixing zone, reaction zone, and post-combustion zone. Hydrogen addition shift these zones towards fuel and air exit from the burner. Enrichment of methane with hydrogen on a mass basis up to 6% reduces CO emission considerably and increases NO_x emission moderately. Effect of H₂ addition on combustion and emission characteristics is more prominent in non-swirling IDF. Combustion noise is augmented with the hydrogen addition and the magnitude of sound level depends on the hydrogen concentration.     

Effect of methane reforming before combustion on emission and calorimetric characteristics of its combustion process

In this study, combustion and emission characteristics of methane mixed with steam (CH₄/H₂O) and the products of methane reforming with steam (CO/H₂/H₂O) were compared. Four fuel compositions were analysed: CH₄+H₂O, CH₄+2H₂O, and products of complete methane reforming in these mixtures, respectively. A comparison was carried out through the numerical model created via Ansys Fluent 2019 R2. A combustion process was simulated using a non-premixed combustion model, standard k-ϵ turbulence model and P-1 radiation model. The combustor heat capacity for interrelated fuel compositions was kept constant due to air preheating before combustion. The inlet air temperature was varied to gain a better insight into the combustion behaviour at elevated temperatures. The effect of steam addition on the emission characteristics and flame temperatures was also evaluated. NO_x formation was assessed on the outlet of the combustion zone. The obtained results indicate that syngas has a higher combustion temperature than methane (in the same combustor heat capacity) and therefore emitted 27% more NO_x comparing to methane combustion. With the air inlet temperature increment, the pollutant concentration difference between the two cases decreased. Steam addition to fuel inlet resulted in lesser emissions both for methane and syngas by 57% and 28%, respectively. In summary, syngas combustion occurred at higher temperature and produced more NO_x emissions in all cases considered.     

Effects of hydrogen on combustion characteristics of methane in air

The explosion process of multi-component gas mixture is extremely complex and may cause serious disaster effects. The safety issue concerning explosion of multi-component gas mixture is urgent to be investigated on account of its wide range of applications. In current work, series of experiments were performed in a 20 L spherical explosion vessel at initial conditions of 1 atm and 293 K, involving methane–hydrogen/air mixtures. The proportion of hydrogen in fuels varied from 0% to 100%. It was observed that peak temperature is always behind the peak pressure in arrival time whatever the fuel equivalence is. Experimental values of peak overpressure are lower than adiabatic ones due to heat loss. It was also founded that the hydrogen addition can raise explosion pressure and temperature in experiment but slightly decrease that in adiabatic condition, and both the increase in experiment and the decrease in adiabatic show a linear correlation versus the proportion of hydrogen. Hence the deviation between the experimental results and the adiabatic results decreases as the hydrogen proportion rises. Moreover, the positive effect of hydrogen addition on (dp/dt)_max is very slight at low hydrogen proportion, while the effect becomes much more pronounced at higher hydrogen contents, showing an exponential growth. For each fuel composition throughout all experiments, the peak overpressure, peak temperature and (dp/dt)_max concerning fuel equivalence ratios of 0.6, 1 and 1.5 follow a same rule: Ф = 1 is the highest, followed by Ф = 1.5 and Ф = 0.6. Finally, the MIEs of gaseous methane–hydrogen/air mixtures at a fuel equivalence ratio of 1.5 were measured as a function of hydrogen proportion. It shows a sharp decrease as the fraction of hydrogen in fuel rises, from 118 mJ for methane–air to 0.12 mJ for hydrogen–air. It is also observed that the MIE of multi-component gas mixtures can be approximately figured as the linear weighted sum of the MIE of each component; the weighting factor is respectively the volume fraction of each component. This can be considered as a universal method to obtain the MIE for a specific multi-component gas.     

Experimental study of hydrogen production from reforming of methane and ammonia assisted by Laval nozzle arc discharge

The production of hydrogen from hydrogen compounds for fuel cell or internal combustion engine applications is a potential method for responding to the energy crisis and environmental problems. In this work carbon dioxide reforming of methane and decomposition of ammonia using a Laval nozzle arc discharge (LNAD) reactor has been exploited at atmospheric pressure without external heating or catalysts. CH₄ (or NH₃) conversion and H₂ selectivity were observed to be negatively correlated with the concentration of CH₄ (or NH₃) and the flux of CO₂ (N₂) and positively correlated with voltage and the Laval nozzle throat radius. Power consumption increased with the concentration of methane at the same CO₂ flow rate, and the conversion of methane gradually increased with the content of water vapor in the gas mixture. A high conversion rate and fair H₂ selectivity were achieved, 51% and 37.5%, respectively, when the methane and carbon dioxide flow rates were 4 L/min and 14 L/min, respectively, and the minimum distance between the two electrodes was 2.5 mm. The LNAD reactor used in this study exhibited a good conversion rate and low energy consumption, which should be suitable for the industrial scale-up of the system.     

The effect of hydrogen addition on combustion and emission characteristics of an n-heptane fuelled HCCI engine

The mechanisms of the influence of hydrogen enrichment on the combustion and emission characteristics of an n-heptane fuelled homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine was numerically investigated using a multi-zone model. The model calculation successfully captured the most available experimental data. The results show that hydrogen addition retards combustion phasing of an n-heptane fuelled HCCI engine due to the dilution and chemical effects, with the dilution effect being more significant. It is because of the chemical effect that combustion duration is reduced at a constant compression ratio if an appropriate amount of hydrogen is added. As a result of retarded combustion phasing and reduced combustion duration, hydrogen addition increases indicated thermal efficiency at a constant combustion phasing. Hydrogen addition reduces indicated specific unburned hydrocarbon emissions, but slightly increases normalized unburned hydrocarbon emissions that are defined as the emissions per unit burned n-heptane mass. The increase in normalized unburned hydrocarbon emissions is caused by the presence of more remaining hydrocarbons that compete with hydrogen for some key radicals during high temperature combustion stage. At a given hydrogen addition level, N₂O emissions increases with overly retarding combustion phasing, but hydrogen addition moderates this increase in N₂O emissions.     

Design and analysis of a new solar hydrogen plant for power,methane, ammonia and urea generation

In this paper, a solar power-based combined plant for power, hydrogen, methane, ammonia and urea production is proposed. A parabolic trough collector is utilized for the system prime mover. Moreover, steam Rankine cycle, organic Rankine cycle, hydrogen production and compression subsystem, ammonia, methane and urea production units, single-effect absorption cooling unit, and freshwater production plant are integrated together to develop the present system for better system performance and cost-effectiveness and reduced environmental impact. In order to analyze and evaluate the proposed multigeneration plant, thermodynamic, parametric and economic studies are performed. According to the assessment results, it is found that energetic and exergetic efficiencies of the present multigeneration plant are 66.12% and 61.56%, respectively. The comparisons of the subsystem and overall plant efficiencies show that the highest energetic and energetic efficiencies belong to freshwater production plant by 79.24% and 75.62%, respectively. In addition, the present parametric analysis indicates that an increase in the reference temperature, solar radiation intensity and working pressure of the solar process has a positive effect on the plant's performance. The cost analysis reveals that as the solar radiation intensity and the working pressure of the solar process increase, the hydrogen generation cost decreases. Furthermore, the hydrogen generation cost is achieved to be 1.94 $/kgH₂ at 650 W/m² of the solar radiation intensity, with other parameters remaining constant.     

An experimental study on the effect of hydrogen enrichment on diesel fueled HCCI combustion

This paper experimentally investigates the influence of hydrogen enrichment on the combustion and emission characteristics of a diesel HCCI engine using a modified Cooperative Fuel Research (CFR) engine. Three fuels, n-heptane and two middle distillates with cetane numbers of 46.6 and 36.6, are studied.The results show that hydrogen enrichment retards the combustion phasing and reduces the combustion duration of a diesel HCCI engine. Besides, hydrogen enrichment increases the power output and fuel conversion efficiency, and improves the combustion stability. However, hydrogen enrichment may narrow the operational compression ratio range and increase the knocking tendency. Both the overall indicated specific CO emissions (isCO) and CO emissions per unit burned diesel fuel mass are reduced by hydrogen enrichment. Although hydrogen enrichment decreases the overall indicated specific unburned hydrocarbon emissions (isHC), it does not significantly affect the HC emissions per unit burned diesel fuel mass.     

Investigations on performance and emission characteristics of an industrial low swirl burner while burning natural gas,methane, hydrogen-enriched natural gas and hydrogen as fuels

Although many detailed chemical reaction mechanisms, skeletal mechanisms and reduced mechanisms are available in the literature to modeling the natural gas, they are computational expensive, required high power computing especially for three dimensional complex geometries with intense meshes. For example, though the DRM19 reduced mechanism does not include NO and NO₂ species, it includes 19 species and 84 reactions. On the other hand, Eddy Dissipation combustion model in which the overall rate of reaction is mainly controlled by turbulent mixing can be utilized as a practical approach for fast burning and fast reaction fuels such as natural gas. Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen is a renewable energy and quite clean in terms of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide emissions. However, numerical and experimental studies on hydrogen combustion in burners are very restricted. In this study, the combustion of natural gas in an industrial low swirl burner–boiler system has been experimentally investigated. The results obtained from the experimental setup have been utilized as boundary conditions for CFD simulations. With the use of Eddy Dissipation method, methane-air-2-step reaction mechanism is used for modeling of natural gas as methane gas and the reaction mechanism has been modified for natural gas considering the natural gas properties to reveal the similarities and differences of both fuels in modeling. In addition, the combustion performances of natural gas with the use of full and periodic models, which are geometric models of the burner–boiler pair, are compared. Moreover, in order to reveal the effect of the hydrogen-enriched natural gas and pure hydrogen on the performance of low swirl burner–boiler considering the combustion emissions, four various gas contents (thermal load ratio: 75%NG + 25%H₂, 50%NG + 50%H₂, 25%NG + 75%H₂, 100%H₂) at the same thermal load have been investigated. The turbulent flames of the industrial low swirl burner have been studied numerically using ANSYS Fluent 16.0 for the solution of governing equations. The results obtained in this study show that with the utilizing Eddy Dissipation method, natural gas can be modeled as methane gas with well-known methane-air-2step reaction mechanism or as natural gas with modified methane-air-2step reaction mechanism with approximate results. Additionally, the use of periodic boundary condition, which enables studying with 1/4 of geometric model, gives satisfactory results with less number of meshes when compared to the full model. Furthermore, in the case of using hydrogen-enriched natural gas or pure hydrogen instead of natural gas as the fuel, the combustion emissions of the burner–boiler such as CO and CO₂ are remarkably decreasing compared to the natural gas. However, the NOx emissions are significantly increasing especially due to thermal NO.     

Study of performance,combustion, and NOx emission behavior of an SI engine fuelled with ammonia/hydrogen blends at various compression ratio

In the present paper, an experimental investigation has been performed under variable CR and 1400&1800RPM speed at a fixed spark timing of 24ºCA BTDC under wide-open throttle conditions. The hydrogen blending is performed based on energy fractions from 5% to 21% of the total fuel energy. With increasing compression ratio (CR), the flame development gets faster, and the flame propagation speed improves, leading to a short combustion period. Similarly, increasing hydrogen fraction improves combustion, resulting in a rapid rise in pressure and temperature. Despite a 13.64% decrease in volumetric efficiency from 5% to 21% hydrogen fraction at 1400 and 1800 RPM, BP and BTE increased by 16.89% and 33%, respectively. The slow-burning properties of NH₃ extend the combustion period, resulting in a long-delayed burning period. As a result, the temperature of the low-hydrogen fraction of the exhaust gas is higher. As the hydrogen fraction and CR increase, this effect decreases, resulting in lower EGT. The hydrogen addition increases the peak temperature; therefore, NO_x increases continuously with increasing hydrogen despite reducing ammonia. Ammonia is a key element used to reduce NO_x from vehicles. A practical solution for controlling the NO_x due to the ammonia/hydrogen blend is selective catalytic reduction (SCR).     

Engine speed and air-fuel ratio effect on the combustion of methane augmented hydrogen rich syngas in DI SI engine

The main challenge on the fueling of pure hydrogen in the automotive vehicles is the limitation in the hydrogen separation from the product of steam reforming and gasification plants and the storage issues. On the other hand, hydrogen fueling in automotive engines has resulted in uncontrolled combustion. These are some of the factors which motivated for the fueling of raw syngas instead of further chemical or physical processes. However, fueling of syngas alone in the combustion chamber has resulted in decreased power output and increased in brake specific fuel consumption. Methane augmented hydrogen rich syngas was investigated experimentally to observe the behavior of the combustion with the variation of the fuel-air mixture and engine speed of a direct-injection spark-ignition (DI SI) engine. The molar ratio of the high hydrogen syngas is 50% H₂ and 50% CO composition. The amount of methane used for augmentation was 20% (V/V). The compression ratio of 14:1 gas engine operating at full throttle position (the throttle is fully opened) with the start of the injection selected to simulate the partial DI (180° before top dead center (BTDC)). The relative air-fuel ratio (λ) was set at lean mixture condition and the engine speed ranging from 1500 to 2400 revolutions per minute (rpm) with an interval of 300 rpm. The result indicated that coefficient of variation of the indicate mean effective pressure (COV of IMEP) was observed to increase with an increase with λ in all speeds. The durations of the flame development and rapid burning stages of the combustion has increased with an increase in λ. Besides, all the combustion durations are shown to be more sensitive to λ at the lowest speed as compared to the two engine speeds.     

Effects of hydrogen addition on cellular instabilities of the spherically expanding propane flames

An experimental study on the effects of hydrogen addition on the instabilities of spherically expanding propane–air flames was conducted in a constant volume combustion vessel over a wide range of mixture compositions and initial temperatures and pressures. The measured laminar burning velocities were compared with those calculatedvalues by using one dimensional freely propagating flames and a recently developed detailed kinetic mechanism. Goodagreementwas obtained between the experiment and calculation. The schlieren images show that for lean mixture combustion, hydrogen addition willincrease the hydrodynamic instability due to the decreased flame thickness and increase the diffusional-thermal instability due to the decreased Lewis number. While forrich mixture combustion, the flame front is initially destabilized and later tends to the stabilized with the increase of hydrogen fraction. This is due to the competing effects of the hydrodynamic instability and the diffusional-thermal instability.     

Theoretical investigation of the combustion performance of ammonia/hydrogen mixtures on a marine diesel engine

Ammonia is a good hydrogen carrier and can be well combined with hydrogen for combustion. The combustion performance of the mixtures of ammonia and hydrogen in a medium-speed marine diesel engine was investigated theoretically. The HCCI combustion mode was selected for reducing thermal-NO_x production. The start fire characteristic of the NH₃–H₂ mixtures was studied under different equivalence ratio, hydrogen-doped ratio, and intake air temperature and pressure. Then, the combustion performance of the NH₃–H₂ mixtures (doping 30% hydrogen) was analyzed at a typical operation condition of engine. The addition hydrogen improved the laminar flame velocity of ammonia, and affected the NO_x emission. For the medium-speed marine engine fueled with NH₃–H₂, reducing combustion temperature, introducing EGR and combining with post-treatment technology would be a feasible scheme to reduce NO_x emission.     

Experimental results of hydrogen enrichment of ethanol in an ultra-lean internal combustion engine

An investigation was made to determine the effects of hydrogen enrichment of ethanol at ultra-lean operating regimes utilizing an experimental method. A 0.745 L 2-cylinder SI engine was modified to operate on both hydrogen and ethanol fuels. The study looked at part throttle, fixed RPM operation of 0%, 15%, and 30% hydrogen fuel mixtures operating in ultra-lean operating regimes. Data was collected to calculate NO and HC emissions, power, exhaust gas temperature, thermal efficiency, volumetric efficiency, brake-specific fuel consumption, and Wiebe burn fraction curves.     

Reactive structures and NOx emissions of methane/hydrogen mixtures in flameless combustion

Methane/hydrogen combustion represents a concrete solution for the energy scenario to come. Indeed, the addition of hydrogen into the natural gas pipeline is one of the solutions foreseen to reduce CO₂ emissions. Nevertheless, the replacement of methane by hydrogen will enhance the reactivity of the system, increasing NOx emissions. To overcome this issue, non-conventional combustion technologies, such as flameless combustion represent an attractive solution. This study aims to improve our understanding of the behaviour of methane/hydrogen blends under flameless conditions by means of experiments and simulations. Several experimental campaigns were conducted to test fuel flexibility for different methane/hydrogen blends, varying the injector geometries, equivalence ratio and dilution degree. It was found that a progressive addition of hydrogen in methane enhanced the combustion features, reducing the ignition delay time and loosing progressively the flameless behaviour of the furnace. Reducing the air injector diameter or increasing the fuel lance length were found to be efficient techniques to reduce the maximum temperature of the system and NOx emissions in the exhausts, reaching values below 30 ppm for pure hydrogen. MILD conditions were achieved up to 75%H₂ in molar fraction, with no visible flame structures. Additionally, RANS-based simulations were also conducted to shed further light on the effect of adding hydrogen into the fuel blend. A sensitivity study was conducted for three different fuel blends: pure methane, an equimolar blend and pure hydrogen. The effect of chemistry detail, mixing models, radiation modeling and turbulence models on in-flame temperatures and NOx emissions was also studied. In particular, it was found that the usage of detailed chemistry for NOx, coupled with an adjustment of the PaSR model, filled the gap between experiments and predictions. Finally, a brute-force sensitivity revealed that NNH is the most important route for NOx production.     

Novel micro-channel methane reformer assisted combustion reaction for hydrogen production

A metal catalyst-containing, 80 ml, micro-channel reactor (MCR) with a section dedicated to combustion reaction was investigated for the potential application of on-board methane steam reforming (MSR) to hydrogen production. The metal catalyst was introduced into the MCR as a shape of a thin plate that was diffusion-bonded with the other micro-channel plates. The combustion reaction was performed on the other side of the MCR for direct provision of the necessary heat for the endothermic MSR and for miniaturizing the system volume. In the MCR, both the methane conversion and the hydrogen production rate are extremely high compared with those of the equilibrium under atmospheric pressure. The required heat of reaction is successfully provided by the combustion of either hydrogen or the methane mixture on the other side of the MCR without the need for any heating cartridges. This novel micro-channel reformer is suitable for application as a compact fuel processor due to its production of hydrogen-rich syn-gas, small volume, simple catalyst loading and use of an active and easily stackable catalyst.