Hydrogen production by catalytic steam reforming of hydrocarbon fuels over Ni/Ce-Al2O3 bifunctional catalysts: Effects of SrO addition

Steam reforming reactions of hydrocarbon fuels were investigated in a fixed bed tubular reactor over nickel supported on Ce-Al2O3 (NCA) bifunctional catalysts promoted with different content of SrO (NCA/x%SrO), in order to obtain high H-2 yield with minimum deactivation by carbon deposition. Physicochemical characteristics of the catalysts were detected by using automatic adsorption instrument, X-ray diffraction, Temperature programmed reduction/desorption, Raman spectroscopy, and Scanning/transmission electron microscope-energy dispersive spectrometer. It was found that the catalytic activities over series NCA/x%SrO catalysts were obviously improved compared with CA catalyst at the range of 550 degrees C-800 degrees C, meanwhile the amount of carbon deposition was significantly decreased with the addition of SrO promoter. In addition, the promotion effect became more stable when the introduction of SrO, which indicated that SrO played an essential role in the catalytic action. The regeneration experiments over the same NCA/5%SrO catalyst were performed three times, and the reforming activities were quite close to the results of fresh ones. The valuable information indicated in this work is that based on the specific properties of NCA/x%SrO, three kinds of metal particles can be introduced into Al2O3 by different way, which should be an effective approach to maintain both catalytic activities, thermal stability and anti-carbon ability. (C) 2016 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.