Abstract:
Hydrogen energy is a carrier energy with high performance, cleanliness and friendly to environment. Hydrogen mainly produced from hydrocarbon steam reforming but the major problems of this process is the lack of a hydrocarbon-source. This research will study hydrogen production from methanol steam reforming over silica supported copper catalysts with various promoters such as ceria, zirconia and ceria-zirconia. The effect of hydrogen pretreatment, W/F ratio and S/M ratio on catalytic activities were also studied. From the experimental results, it was found that copper oxide was a primary form of copper in catalyst and then could be reduced to Cu° by hydrogen pretreatment, detected by XRD. Addition of ceria improved copper dispersion, reduced copper size and lower reduced temperature. From catalytic activities, silica-supported copper catalyst with ceria expressed complete methanol conversion at 300 ℃ with 0.41% CO selectivity. When increasing W/F ratio from 0.1 to 0.5 and S/M ratio from 1.5 to 2.0, The temperature for complete methanol conversion was shifted to lower temperature ~250 ℃. CO selectivity was also shifted to 0.28%.