Nickel based catalysts supported on porous support for methane steam reforming: potential and short review

Abstract

The world is now demanding other sustainable energy that can help explore new technologies, especially energy conversion and storage. Hydrogen is regarded as one of the most promising oils and gas successors as a fuel due to its high energy content per unit mass and it burns completely free of pollutants. A widely used method for hydrogen production is steam reforming methane (SRM) from biogas. In the SRM process, using a catalyst is crucial, and, if compared to the available metal-based catalysts, Ni-based catalysts provide an acceptable high activity and a lower cost. In addition, the support material of a catalyst significantly affects its stability, especially for catalysts exposed to elevated temperatures. In this work, porous alumina support was used as a support material for the preparation of a nickel-based catalytic hollow membrane reactor. Porous alumina support was fabricated using a double-step anodization method. The presence of large pores (≈120 nm) on support material contributes to decreasing the resistance to mass transfer. The study also highlights the recent progress on methane steam reforming reaction, giving a short overview of catalyst utilization and the fundamentals of SRM through the developed membrane reactor.