INCAPE   05401
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES EN CATALISIS Y PETROQUIMICA "ING. JOSE MIGUEL PARERA"
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
“Tailor-made catalysts to produce H2 in membrane reactors”, Conferencia Invitada
Autor/es:
E.A. LOMBARDO
Lugar:
Pittsburgh, USA
Reunión:
Simposio; Pittsburgh-Cleveland Catalysis Society Spring Symposium; 2009
Institución organizadora:
Pitssburgh-Cleveland Catalysis Society
Resumen:
The production and purification of hydrogen at competitive cost is the controlling bottleneck to its use as an energy vector. If it were possible to obtain ultrapure H2 (< 10 ppm CO) in just one vessel, the size and cost of the overall process could be significantly reduced. This is the driving force behind the efforts presently being made to develop competitive membrane reactors to produce hydrogen. Two key components are needed to develop high-performance devices: i) Highly H2 selective and durable membranes; ii) Catalysts that fulfil the requirements imposed by the presence of such a membrane, which are different from those required in conventional reactors. The focus of this talk will be placed on catalyst development and optimization, and it will also include the results obtained with the best formulations in the membrane reactors built by our group.             In this talk, the best catalysts produced in our lab will be presented. They contain either Rh or Ru and are supported on either La2O3 or La2O3-SiO2. All the catalysts were first tested in a conventional fixed-bed reactor. Trying to understand the connection between the physical chemical features and the catalytic behavior, we used a battery of instrumental techniques such as XRD, TPR, FITR-DRIFTS, Laser-Raman Spectroscopy, and XPS. These tools led to a good understanding of the role of noble metal-support interaction in the working catalyst which, together with the kinetic data obtained in the conventional reactor, yielded a meaningful reaction mechanism and a consistent kinetic equation needed to model the membrane reactor.             In the membrane reactors built using self-standing Pd-Ag alloy films all the catalysts assayed achieved methane conversions well above the equilibrium value, the best one by ca. 80%. Besides, 80% of the H2 produced was recovered in the permeate side with a purity of 99.999% as required for use in PEM fuel cells. One of our membrane reactors operated 2000 hours on stream including at least 20 changes of catalyst with the consequent cooling and heating steps.