Abstract
Glycerol (a bio-waste generated from biodiesel production) has been touted as a promising bio-syngas precursor via reforming route. Previous studies have indicated that carbon deposition is the major performance-limiting factor for nickel (Ni) catalyst during glycerol steam reforming. In the current paper, dry (CO2)-reforming of glycerol, a new reforming route was carried out over alumina (Al2O3)-supported non-promoted and lanthanum-promoted Ni catalysts. Both sets of catalysts were synthesized via wet co-impregnation procedure. The physicochemical characterization of the catalyst showed that the promoted catalyst possessed smaller metal crystallite size, hence higher metal dispersion compared to the virgin Ni/Al2O 3 catalyst. This was also corroborated by the surface images captured by the FESEM analysis. In addition, BET surface area measurement gave 92.05m2/g for non-promoted Ni catalyst whilst promoted catalysts showed an average of 1 to 6% improvement depending on the La loading. Reaction studies at 873 K showed that glycerol dry reforming successfully produced H 2 with glycerol conversion and H2 yield that peaked at 9.7% and 25% respectively over 2wt% La content. The optimum catalytic performance by 2%La-Ni/Al2O3 can be attributed to the larger BET surface area and smaller crystallite size that ensured accessibility of active catalytic area.
Original language | British English |
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Pages (from-to) | 160-166 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Bulletin of Chemical Reaction Engineering & Catalysis |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2013 |
Keywords
- Biofuel
- Dry reforming
- Gycerol
- Hydrogen