The most commonly used process for the production of hydrogen on a commercial scale is the catalyzed steam reforming reaction of methane or hydrocarbons with water at a high temperature. This endothermic reaction requires a substantial energy input to maintain the reforming reaction. To improve the overall thermal efficiency and hydrogen yield a secondary water-gas shift reaction is used after the steam reforming process. Carbon monoxide formed in the steam reforming step reacts exothermically with water over special catalysts to produce heat and yields additional hydrogen and carbon dioxide. For use in the fuel cell and ICE applications the hydrogen must be purified. The commercial steam reforming process shows good thermal efficiency particularly so if an outlet for the steam produced in the in the water-gas shift section is available. The commercial steam reforming process has been found to be difficult to scale to smaller units particularly such as envisioned for on-board supply of hydrogen to automotive applications.

The Department of Energy commissioned in 2004 an Independent Review Panel to provide a technical recommendation on a Go/No-Go decision for continuing the extensive their extensive funded effort on the on-board reformer. A No-Go decision was reached after full consideration of the substantial gains that had been made in the program toward meeting the stringent DOE criteria for the reformer. There were two important technical targets not met that were emphasized in the decision process. These were reformer start-up time, set to be less than one minute, and start-up energy expenditure, limited to less than 2 MJ for a 50 kW unit. An additional concern was that the energy intensive on-board reformer system would not result in performance significantly better than hybrid gasoline technology. The panel recommendations did include continued interest in fundamental studies and innovative concepts.

The focus of this paper will be to share results from a program for development of an innovative reforming process that uses non-thermal plasma for hydrogen production from renewable feeds. In the presentation comparison of the reformer characteristics such as thermal efficiency, energy use, start-up time and product structure with that for conventional steam reforming is made.

The process does not require extensive heating of the fuel feed and equipment to reach high conversion and hydrogen production. This feature in combination with the high efficiency of this unique process makes it attractive for a variety of stationary and mobile applications.