Hydrogen production via glycerol dry reforming over La-Ni/Al 2O3 catalyst

Kah Weng Siew, Hua Chyn Lee, Jolius Gimbun, Chin Kui Cheng

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

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 languageBritish English
Pages (from-to)160-166
Number of pages7
JournalBulletin of Chemical Reaction Engineering & Catalysis
Volume8
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013

Keywords

  • Biofuel
  • Dry reforming
  • Gycerol
  • Hydrogen

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