Steam reforming of methanol over a Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst: a kinetic analysis and strategies for suppression of CO formation

Production of hydrogen from methanol over Cu/ZnO catalysts promoted by ZrO2 and Al2O3

“…However, when studying the process differentially, it is clear that O 2 and water are converted consecutively-O 2 through total oxidation and water by steam reforming. This pathway, a consecutive reaction scheme consisting of methanol combustion followed by SRM, was proposed in a previous paper from our laboratory [5] and also gains support in the literature [30,32,33,37]. An interesting feature is that water formation by combustion reactions in the low-conversion regime consumes O 2 , hence increasing the H 2 O/CH 3 OH ratio and suppressing CO formation by RWGS.…”

“…The temperature at which complete conversion is obtained can be significantly lowered by decreasing the space velocity, as demonstrated in a previous paper from our laboratory [5]. However, an optimization with respect to this parameter was not the objective of the present study.…”

“…CO appears to be a secondary product, formed by RWGS at high temperatures [18,19]. However, as discussed in a previous paper from our group, it is possible to conduct both SRM and CRM under conditions where CO concentrations are much lower than those predicted by thermodynamics [5]. The contribution from the RWGS reaction is insignificant as long as the temperature is low enough and the contact time short enough to prevent complete conversion of methanol.…”

“…Ref. [5]), makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions based on the comparison of calculated TOFs. For instance, differences in catalyst porosity must also be considered.…”

“…In the literature, copper-based catalysts have received considerable attention for production of H 2 by SRM [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Recent papers have discussed the POM reaction [22][23][24], as well as the combined process for production of H 2 [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38].…”