Production of hydrogen via partial oxidation and steam reforming of ethanol over Au/TiO2

E. LÓPEZ; N. DIVINS; N. MORENO; J. LLORCA; F. GONZALEZ DE RIVERA; I. ANGURELL; M. SECO; O. ROSELL

Munich

Congreso; 15 International Congress on Catalysis; 2012

Growing attention on environmental problems such as the emissions of green-house gases is giving rise to consistent efforts for developing new and sustainable technologies from renewable feedstock, such as ethanol, which is suitable because of its low cost and toxicity and its easy storage and transportation. The steam reforming of ethanol has been usually claimed as the most useful reaction to convert ethanol into hydrogen, but presents different drawbacks such as pronounced catalyst deactivation and an elevated thermal demand due to its high endothermic character. On the contrary, the exothermic partial oxidation process has several advantageous characteristics: there is no need for external heat sources and additional fluids like H2O, it has a good dynamic response and fast start-up and low soot or secondary products formation. In this work we report for the first time on the performance of Au/TiO2 catalysts for both ethanol steam reforming and partial oxidation reactions for producing hydrogen. Monolithic reactors were used because they overcome the disadvantages of packed bed reactors, such as catalyst attrition, high pressure drop and preferential path toward the bed.