Abstract:
The synthesis gas (hydrogen and carbonmonoxide) can be used as a raw material for petrochemicalindustries and as a fuel for high temperature fuel cells such as molten carbonate fuel cell. TheCH/COz reforming, one of thermochemical processes, has been currently developed to producesynthesis gas and reduce green house gases. In such process, noble metal catalysts such as Pt, Rhand Ru have been found to give high conversion, but they are expensive. Hence, cheaper activemetals with medium activity like nickel (Ni) has been considered to replace those metals. However,its deactivation due to coke formation has been a major problem encountered. Two ways to reducethis problem are catalyst improvement and reforming condition adjustment.In this research, the CH/COz reforming over Ni/Al z0 3 catalyst was conducted to investigate theeffect of the parameters, both catalyst improvement and operating condition aspects, on the activityand stability of NilAIP3 catalyst in the reaction. These parameters were I) the Ni loading (525%Ni), 2) the reaction temperature (50o-700?C), 3) the addition of ZrO, promoter including itsloading and preparation technique, and 4) CH4:COZ feed ratio (0.5-1.5). From the experimentalresults, it was found that 15% Ni was sufficient to provide high yield of Hz and reactant conversion.The effective temperature was found at 700?C. The Ni catalyst promoted with ZrOz and prepared byeither the sequence or the co-impregnation methods showed better performance in terms of cokereduction or catalyst stability but slightly lower activity than the non-promoted one. In addition, thesequence-impregnation technique can make the more stabilized catalyst than the co-impregnationtechnique because the Ni active metal was better dispersed on ZrOiAl203 support. This couldenhance the free oxygen receptive capability of Ni over zr02 The 15%Nil7%ZrOIAIP3 preparedby the sequence-impregnation method showed the optimum performance by giving good conversionwith the least catalyst deactivation. Finally, in the study of CH4:C02 effect, the activity of15%Nil7%ZrO/AI203catalyst in terms of H, yield was decreased as CH4:C02increased from 0.5 to1.0 and approached a constant value when CH4:C02 was in the range of 1.0-1.5. Similarly, thecatalyst stability was decreased as CH4:C02 increased. This is because the excess amount of CH4from the CHJC02 reforming stoichiometric value was thermally cracked to carbon.