INVESTIGADORES
ADROVER Maria Esperanza
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Ethanol steam reforming over Rh-Pd/CeO2: Experimental and model of a catalytic membrane reactor
Autor/es:
M. ESPERANZA ADROVER; NURIA DIVINS; M. N. PEDERNERA; JORDI LLORCA; EDUARDO LÓPEZ
Reunión:
Conferencia; 11th International Conference on Catalysis in Membrane reactors; 2013
Resumen:
Hydrogen production has become an important topic over the past decades, but nowadays it is of greater interest because of fuel cell technology developments. This situation has intensified the research tending both to im-prove the existing technologies and to develop new pro-cesses to generate and purify H2. Catalytic steam reforming or partial oxidation of hy-drocarbons or alcohols have been reported as attractive processes to obtain a hydrogen-rich gas stream. Bioethanol is a promising raw material due to its low toxicity, high energetic density and almost-closed CO2 generation cycle. Hydrogen generation by steam reforming of bioethanol (ESR) has been studied over a variety of catalytic systems. Among them, noble metal-based catalysts (Pd, Pt, Rh, Ru) are reported to perform well for ESR [1]. They are stable and exhibit high activity and adequate selectivity, provided that high enough temperature levels are selected for oper-ation (T > 550 °C). Supports commonly used include Al2O3, MgO, La2O3 and CeO2. It has been found that the metal-support interaction prevents metal sintering and reduces coke formation. CeO2-based supports are preferred due to ceria redox and oxygen storage properties [2]. However, the hydrogen produced has to be profusely purified before feeding the PEM fuel cell. An interesting alternative is to use Pd-Ag membranes in order to separate pure hydrogen from the reaction products. The use of po-rous stainless steel as support of the active membrane is of interest due to construction and mechanical robustness considerations. The aim of this contribution is to describe both exper-imental and theoretically the behavior of an ethanol steam reformer equipped with pure hydrogen separation. A la-boratory Rh-Pd/CeO2 structured catalyst was profited to-wards syn-gas generation. Pure hydrogen was achievedby means of a commercial Pd-Ag membrane placed down-stream the catalyst.