Steam Reforming of methanol Over Cu/Al2O3/ZnO Catalysts
Abstract
In this research, steam reforming of methanol over Cu/Al2O3/ZnO catalysts was investigated. The catalysts were prepared by conventional co-precipitation and sequential precipitation methods. Especially, the sequential precipitation method were performed by varying the sequence of additions of copper, aluminum, and zinc nitrate solutions. The experimental results showed clearly that the preparation methods affected the performance of catalysts. The Cu/AI2O3/ZnO catalysts prepared by consecutively adding copper, aluminum, and zinc nitrate solutionsexhibited better performance. The effect of Al2O3/ZnO molar ratios on the activity of catalysts was also studied. It was found that the catalysts with 50:5:45 of Cu/AI2O3/ZnO molar ratio showed higher activity than others. In order to improve catalytic activity, Mn- or Cr-promoted over Cu/Alp.jZnO was also investigated. It was interesting to observe that either the Mn- or the Cr-promoted Cu/AI2O3/ZnO catalysts have higher activity than nonpromoted ones, indicating that Mn and Cr promoters give some synergistic effect.
References
Akaratiwa, S., Udomman, T., Ponbubpha, J., and Naovaratjirawat, S., "Study of Steam reforming of methanol over Cu/ZnO catalysts," Proceeding of Regional Symposium of Chemical Engineering, Singapore, Dec. 2000, p.RE. 5/6.
Jiang, C.J., Trimm, D.L., and Wainwright, M.S., "Kinetic study of steam reforming of methanol over copper-based catalysts," Appl. Catal. A. General, 93 (1993) p. 245/255.
Shen, G.C., Fujita, S.I., Matsumoto, S., and Takesawa, N., "Steam reforming of methanol on binary Cu/ZnO catalysts: Effects of preparation condition upon precursors, surface structure and catalytic activity," J. Molecular Catalysis A: Chemical, 124 (1997) p. 123/136.
Idem, R.O. and Bakhshi, N.N., "Production of hydrogen from methanol over promoted co-precipitated Cu-Al catalysts: The effects of various promoters and catalyst activation methods," Ind. Eng. Chem., 34, No. 5 (1995) p. 1548/1557.
Cheng, W.H., Shlau, C.Y., Liu, T.H., Tung, H.L., Lu, J.F., and Hau, C.C., " Promotion of Cu/Cr/Mn catalyst by alkali additives in methanol decomposition," Appl. Catal. A. General, 170 (1998) p.215/224.
Akaratiwa, S. and Udomman, T., "Effect of addition of various metals into Cu/ZnO catalyst on the hydrogen production from methanol steam reforming," Research and Development Journal of the Engineering Institute of Thailand, 12 No 2 (2001) p. 1/6.
Breen, J.P. and Ross , J.R.H., " Methanol reforming for fuel-cell applications: Development of zirconia-containing Cu-Zn-Al catalysts," Catalysis Today, 51 (1991) p. 521/533.
Copyright holder for articles is ASEAN Journal of Chemical Engineering. Articles published in ASEAN J. Chem. Eng. are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
Authors agree to transfer all copyright rights in and to the above work to the ASEAN Journal of Chemical Engineering Editorial Board so that the Editorial Board shall have the right to publish the work for non-profit use in any media or form. In return, authors retain: (1) all proprietary rights other than copyright; (2) re-use of all or part of the above paper in their other work; (3) right to reproduce or authorize others to reproduce the above paper for authors’ personal use or for company use if the source and the journal copyright notice is indicated, and if the reproduction is not made for the purpose of sale.