Oxidative steam reforming of acetic acid on Ni catalysts: Influence of the La promotion on mesostructured supports
Pedro J. Megía, Anabel Morales, Arturo J. Vizcaíno, J.A. Calles, A. Carrero
Abstract
In this work, the support effect and the La2O3 promotion of Ni-based catalysts on the oxidative steam reforming of acetic acid as bio-oil model compound has been studied. Ni/SBA-15 showed the worst catalytic performance with an acetic acid conversion dropping below 30% at 500 °C ascribed to active phase oxidation. In contrast, Ni supported over mesoporous CeO2 (CeO2-m) reached better catalytic performance and lower coke formation due to the higher Ni dispersion and oxygen mobility of the support. On the other hand, La2O3 promotion to SBA-15 and CeO2-m led to even higher Ni dispersion and prevented sintering during the reforming reaction. This effect resulted in an improvement in the catalytic performance for both promoted samples. As a consequence of low Ni crystallite size and high oxygen mobility, Ni/La2O3–CeO2-m reached almost complete conversion (∼96%), the highest hydrogen yield (∼53%) maintained for 5 h with the lowest coke formation (62.3 mgcoke·gcat−1·h−1).