SUMMARY
The rich‐hydrogen generation from ethanol steam reforming over NiZr, which is used as an anode material in solid oxide fuel cells, ‐loaded MCM‐48 (NiZr/MCM‐48) catalyst was investigated in this study. We used an impregnation approach to synthesize an MCM‐48 (70.0 wt‐%) support loaded with bimetallic NiZr (30.0‐wt%, Ni:Zr atomic ratio = 4:6, 5:5, and 6:4), and the prepared catalysts were applied to the steam‐reforming reactions of ethanol. These three bimetallic NiZr/MCM‐48 catalysts exhibited significantly higher reforming reactivity than the mono‐metal, Ni‐loaded MCM‐48 (Ni/MCM‐48) catalyst. The hydrogen production was started from 350°C over the three NiZr/MCM‐48 catalysts, compared to above 550°C over the Ni/MCM‐48 catalyst. The catalytic performance was affected by the Zr content. The H2 production and ethanol conversion were maximized at 85% and 95%, respectively, over Ni4Zr6/MCM‐48 at 750°C for 1 h at CH3CH2OH:H2O = 1:1 and a gas hourly space velocity of 4000 h‐1. This high performance was maintained for up to 60 h. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.