Progress on Catalyst Development for the Steam Reforming of Biomass and Waste Plastics Pyrolysis Volatiles: A Review

In recent decades, the production of H-2 from biomass, waste plastics, and their mixtures has attracted increasing attention in the literature in order to overcome the environmental problems associated with global warming and CO2 emissions caused by conventional H-2 production processes. In this regard, the strategy based on pyrolysis and in-line catalytic reforming allows for obtaining high H-2 production from a wide variety of feedstocks. In addition, it provides several advantages compared to other thermochemical routes such as steam gasification, making it suitable for its further industrial implementation. This review analyzes the fundamental aspects involving the process of pyrolysis-reforming of biomass and waste plastics. However, the optimum design of transition metal based reforming catalysts is the bottleneck in the development of the process and final H-2 production. Accordingly, this review focuses especially on the influence the catalytic materials (support, promoters, and active phase), synthesis methods, and pyrolysis-reforming conditions have on the process performance. The results reported in the literature for the steam reforming of the volatiles derived from biomass, plastic wastes, and biomass/plastics mixtures on different metal based catalysts have been compared and analyzed in terms of H-2 production.

Automated summary

This review focuses on the production of H-2 from biomass and waste plastics using pyrolysis-reforming, highlighting the bottleneck in the design of reforming catalysts. The study emphasizes the significant impact of catalytic materials and synthesis methods on the performance of the pyrolysis-reforming process.