Steam reforming of methanol over copper–yttria catalyst supported on praseodymium–aluminum mixed oxides

Abstract

Abstract In the present study, an active copper-based catalyst with long-term stability for methanol steam reforming was developed. The catalyst copper–yttria supported on praseodymium–aluminum mixed oxides was prepared by using PEG-400 as dispersion agent and Y 2 O 3 as promoter for dispersing Cu particles to get the Cu crystallite size less than 10 nm and to increase the catalytic activity with high selectivity of CO 2 ; alumina was used as structural enhancer to strengthen the stability of Cu–Y 2 O 3 /Pr 2 O 3 catalyst. The prepared catalysts were characterized with BET, TEM, TGA and XRD. Using Cu (25) Y 2 O 3(10) /(Pr 2 O 3(50) Al 2 O 3(50) ) (65) in a fixed-bed reactor, the H 2 yield reached 99.1% at 280 °C with CO 2 selectivity above 98%, and the H 2 production rate at 320 °C only slightly decreased from 120 to 109 mmol/(s⋅kg cat ) in 100 h of duration at 4.6 h − 1 of weight hourly space velocity based on methanol. The high stability of catalyst Cu–Y 2 O 3 /Pr 2 O 3 –Al 2 O 3 showed a good performance in methanol steam reforming.