Abstract Reformer, the most important link of fuel cell, is the main set to create the hydrogen. After the fuel passes through the catalytic reaction by reformer, will produce hydrogen and chemical substances, the hydrogen will become the energy to support fuel cell. At the present day, the technology of PEM fuel cell and traditional fuel reformer has already existed, only need to reduce the volume, cost and to promote the efficiency. Catalytic layer, with the construction of microchannel, makes the adequate impact to gas and catalyst to promote the efficiency. This research uses the Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to simulate the fluid field and heat-mass transfer of microchannel, to discuss the function influence to the different parameter such as velocity, temperature, channel length, and channel height. The result displays, with the same inlet speed and temperature, by the increasing of the channel length, the amount of hydrogen will raise and residual methanol will reduce. When the channel length is more than 500£gm, the produce rate of hydrogen will not be a big change. If fix the channel length at 500£gm, under the different inlet temperature, while the maximum concentration at inlet, the speed of hydrogen at inlet is not the same. The best inlet speed will increase with the higher temperature. When fix the channel length at 500£gm, raising the altitude to 500£gm, the hydrogen product will not increase, on the contrary, it¡¦ll go down. Keywords¡GFuel cell reformer¡BMicorchannel of hat and mass transfer¡BNumerical simulations

Methanol micro-channel reformer is an important device for generating hydrogen to supply micro fuel-cell needs. In the fuel reforming process, the catalyst is adopted to reduce the activation energy and speed up the reforming reaction. Hydrogen and other chemical substance are produced in the reformer catalytic reaction. The micro-channel structure provides more opportunity for molecules of methanol and steam mixture to collide with catalyst for high reforming reaction to take place. The reforming process of methanol in a micro-channel reformer with Pd/ZnO catalyst is studied numerically in this thesis. The effects of various channel length, channel height, inlet velocity, inlet temperature, and catalyst usage (ratio of wall area covered by catalyst) on the performance of reformer (methanol conversion percentage) are investigated numerically. The results show that the methanol conversion increases with increased channel length until a channel length of about 3000£gm, the conversion approaches 100%. The conversion percentage decreases with increased inlet velocity, however, the production rate of hydrogen depends on flow rate and conversion percentage. Increasing the channel height results in decreased methonal conversion due to less collision opportunity with the catalyst. The methanol conversion percentage increases with the increase of the inlet temperature. However, the production rate of the hydrogen starts to descend when the inlet temperature is higher than about 523 K owing to more methonal preburned in raising the inlet temperature. Methanol conversion increases with the catalyst usage. However, it is worth noting that the increase is only about 15% for catalyst usage from 50% to 100%. The results in this study provide design data for the fuel cell system designer.