Tuning Hydrogen and Carbon Nanotube Production from Phenol Steam Reforming on Ni/Fe-Based Nanocatalysts

The development of cost and environmentally efficient catalysts is essential to transferring phenolic compounds to valuable fuels and chemicals. Various nanocatalysts with different amounts of Ni/Fe have been employed in the steam reforming of phenol, which showed high performance in terms of activity and stability. The conversion and hydrogen yield of phenol reforming over Ni/Fe-catalysts can reach 87% and 81%, respectively. The catalyst can keep its high reactivity for more than 200 h at the steam to carbon ratio (S/C) of 13.3, which is much higher than the previous report of 13 h. Using the newly developed Ni/Fe-catalysts in this research, the hydrogen-rich syngas or carbon nanotube (CNT) could be selectively produced via simply tuning the S/C ratio. The influence of the Ni/Fe ratio and S/C ratio on the steam reforming performance was investigated.