Hydrogen production via steam reforming of sunflower oil over Ni/Al catalysts from hydrotalcite materials

Abstract

Steam reforming vegetable oils has recently been proposed as a process for producing hydrogen from renewable resources. In this paper, we present a hydrotalcite-type (HT) nickel catalyst, with an Ni/Al atomic ratio of 2/1, that is suitable for steam reforming sunflower oil. We have studied the activity of this catalyst at steam to carbon (S/C) ratios of 3, 6 and 9, and temperatures from 500°C to 650°C, and compared it with two commercial catalysts for steam reforming hydrocarbons (ICI 46/1 and UCI G90C). The HT catalyst had almost 10 times more catalytic activity than the commercial catalysts. Structural characterization of the catalysts by BET, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and hydrogen-pulse chemisorption, showed that the higher activity of the HT catalyst is due to its higher surface and metal areas. These are 104 and 17.2 m 2/ g , respectively.