Oxidative steam reforming of ethanol over Rh(1%)MgAl2O4/Al2O3

CECILIA GRASCHINSKY; JORGELINA LUPIANO; MIGUEL LABORDE; NORMA AMADEO

Madrid

Congreso; Catalysis for Clean Energy and Sustainable Chemistry; 2012

Instituto de Catalisis y Petroleoquimica

Hydrogen gas is one of the most widely used in chemical and petrochemical industry, can also be used as fuel in internal combustion engines or feed to PEM cells. The hydrogen can be obtained from the reaction of reforming of ethanol with water vapor (SR) [1-3]. This is a highly endothermic reaction requiring large amounts of energy, which is a serious drawback. This energy can be supplied externally using ethanol burners or co-feeding oxygen along with ethanol and water, so part of the ethanol reacts with this new reagent releasing energy, this process is known as oxidative steam reforming of ethanol (OSR). Using ethanol, water and oxygen at the molar ratio of 1:1.8:0.6 the overall reaction can be thermally neutral. Rh-based catalysts have presented good activity and selectivity to H2 during SR [3]. They have also proven to be stable in the presence of O2 [4]. These results make the Rh a suitable metal for use in the autothermal reforming reaction of ethanol. This paper presents the kinetic results obtained with the catalyst Rh(1%)/MgAl2O4/Al2O3 for OSR. We present a reaction scheme that describes our results. This study is a first step in order to obtain a reaction mechanism and kinetic parameters of this system.