Hybrid effect of the activated carbon and the CuO catalyst on vegetable oil steam reforming

Abstract

This study aims to utilize of bio material to produce green hydrogen energy through hybrid of the activated carbon and the CuO catalyst in vegetable oil steam reformer. The experiment was done in the atmospheric pressure steam reformer. The results show that activated carbon and CuO individually performs the same trend in producing hydrogen. Their combination accelerates hydrogen production. This indicates that heat energy makes CuO alters the electron density around the reactant by combining the van der Waals force with the induction due to electron jump in its narrow ban gap. Therefore, CuO activate effectively the polar water (H2O) molecules. More energy is needed to alter the electron in stable large molecule triglyceride of vegetable oil. On the other hand, the activated carbon does it by combining the van der Waals force with the induction due to delocalized of the pi electrons travelling between carbon atoms in the graphite structure. Consequently, only the nonpolar triglyceride molecules are attracted while the polar H2O are repelled by hydrophobic force. Thus, larger energy is needed to activate electrons in H2O. When they are combined, the CuO works only on H2O while activated carbon does only on triglyceride which is highly effective. Copyright © 2018 VBRI Press.