Catalytic production of hydrogen using steam reforming of ethanol

The increase in the world energy needs, reduction in the life of fossil energy resources and increase in the environmental pollution led to the search for new and renewable energy resources. Hydrogen happens to be one of the clean and renewable alternative energy sources that can be produced from biomass and water. The future energy technology is being developed on the use of hydrogen. Steam reforming is becoming the utmost method for the production of hydrogen. In this study, ethanol which can be obtained with various ways from biomass and fossil fuels as well as less toxic is used as the source of hydrogen. The purpose of producing high yield of hydrogen at lower temperatures was realized in a heterogeneous phase in a catalytic tubular reactor. Being experimental studies, the synthesis of catalysts and catalytic reactions were conducted in this work. In the first phase of the work, the impregnation technique used in the preparation of the catalysts; the supporting materials were chosen to be activated carbon and LiAlO2 and the active materials were selected as Ni, Cu, Pd, Cs and NiO. Using different ratios, catalysts containing Ni-Cu-Pd/AC, Ni-Cu-Cs/AC, Ni-Cu-Cs/LiAlO2 and NiO-Pd of active components were prepared. The surface morphology, surface area and structural characteristics of the synthesized catalysts (i.e., SEM, BET and EDS analysis) were determined. In the second phase of the work, the synthesized catalysts, constant feed flow rate, different feed mole ratio (water/ethanol mole ratio = 1,85, 4 and 9) and different temperatures (300-700oC) were used for each catalytic reaction experiment that was carried out. The evaluation of the results made based on the ethanol conversion, the percentage of hydrogen in the products, hydrogen yield and hydrogen selectivity revealed that when the catalyst containing 10%Cu-10%Ni-1%Pd/AC was used for the reaction at 400oC with the feed containing water/ethanol mol ratio = 4, the hydrogen selectivity was 0,76 while for the NiO-1%Pd catalyst used at 500oC with the feed having water/ethanol mol ratio = 9, the selectivity was found to be 0,97. Based on this, these two catalysts were discovered to be catalysts with the highest performance.