EMPLOYING GRANULATED BIMETALLIC NANOCOMPOSITE OF Ni/Cu@CuMOF NANOCOMPOSITE IN STEAM REFORMING OF METHANOL PROCESS FOR HYDROGEN PRODUCTION

Abstract

Conventional fossil-based energy sources have numerous environmental demerits; sustainable and renewable sources are attracting the undivided attention of researchers because of their outstanding physical and chemical features. Hydrogen as a green energy source is the most preferential source employed in numerous industrial-scale technologies. Not only is hydrogen a potent energy carrier, but also it is not detrimental to the environment. Among many other hydrogen production processes, steam reforming of methanol (SRM) is deemed a practical method due to its low energy consumption. In this study, a metal-organic framework [copper benzenedicarboxylate (CuBDC)] has been utilized as a support of two active metals, Cu and Ni, in a SRM process (Ni/Cu@CuBDC). The catalyst is granulated with an in-house-made granulating machine in order to take a positive step toward utilizing the novel catalysts in a pilot-scale process. Many characterization analyses (scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, H<sub>2</sub>-temperature-programmed reduction, CO<sub>2</sub>-temperature-programmed desorption (TPD), and NH<sub>3</sub>-TPD) were conducted in order to evaluate the accuracy of the synthetic catalysts and their performance. At the optimum temperature (300°C), which comparably is a low temperature for the SRM process, 99% methanol conversion with 98% H<sub>2</sub> yield was achieved. Moreover, due to the employment of CuBDC as the support, the amount of acidic and basic active sites was adjusted in a way that the CO selectivity of the process reached 3.59%.