Development of catalysts for hydrogen synthesis from ethanol: study of different supports

• Grant number: 13/18062-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2013
• End date: October 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Chemistry - Physical-Chemistry
• Principal Investigator: Daniela Coelho de Oliveira
• Grantee: Arthur Eduardo Pastore de Lima
• Host Institution: Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais (CNPEM). Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (Brasil). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Hydrogen is an important raw material in the production of fertilizers, and it has a crucial role in reducing the impact of petroleum fuels and also becoming an important source of energy for use in fuel cells. The growing demand for hydrogen production has increased the interest in many catalytic processes. Among them, steam reforming reactions with ethanol serving as source has a great appeal for environmental problems. Currently the volume and quality of hydrogen production are affected by catalyst deactivation, which occurs by different mechanisms. The most common one is the formation of carbon deposits over the active phase, which causes bad heat transfer, decrease the selectivity and activity, changing the reaction routes to produce a lot of byproducts. The another common problem is the loss of the interaction between the active phase and the support after the first reaction cycle, due to structural and morphological changes caused by the reaction conditions. In order to understand and control the role of support in these two deactivation mechanisms, we will prepare different catalysts and evaluate them in terms of yield, selectivity and catalytic activity to study how the properties of the active phase and the support affect the presented activity. The reaction studied will be the steam reforming of ethanol to obtain hydrogen and the reaction products will be quantified by gas chromatography. The compositions with best performance will be characterized by different techniques to correlate the catalytic properties observed with the characteristics of the materials studied.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

PASTORE DE LIMA, ARTHUR E.; DE OLIVEIRA, DANIELA C.. In situ XANES study of Cobalt in Co-Ce-Al catalyst applied to Steam Reforming of Ethanol reaction. CATALYSIS TODAY, v. 283, p. 104-109, APR 1 2017. (13/18062-2)