Effect of Pt on Zn-Free Cu-Al Catalysts for Methanol Steam Reforming to Produce Hydrogen

Steam reforming of methanol can be considered as an attractive reaction aiming at hydrogen production for PEM fuel cells. Although Cu/Al-contained catalysts are considerably evaluated in this reaction, further evaluation is essential to evaluate the impact of some promoters like Pt in order to find a comprehensively optimized catalyst. Pt promoter is employed with different methods in this study. Firstly, the amount of Cu loading in Cu/Al ratio is optimized via coprecipitation method. The sample containing ۳۰% wt. of Cu exhibits better performance with methanol conversion of ۷۰% and CO selectivity of ۰.۴۴%. Besides, impregnating a different amount of Pt onto Al۲O۳ reveals an inadequate potential for this reaction. In contrary, doping Pt into Cu/Al catalyst increases the methanol conversion as high as ۸۱% and CO selectivity reaches to approximately zero at ۲۷۰ °C. In addition, using a dual-bed reactor including Cu/Al and Pt/Al۲O۳ catalyst displays a relatively satisfactory performance by which the conversion and selectivity are found ۸۳.۷% and ۱.۵%, respectively. In this study, analyses of X-Ray Diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy, and BET surface area are used to characterize the synthesized catalysts.

Keywords:

Methanol Steam Reforming , PEM fuel cells , Hydrogen , Dual-bed reactor , Pt , Cu/Al catalyst