Hydrogen production by catalytic steam reforming of hydrocarbon fuels over Ni/Ce–Al2O3 bifunctional catalysts: Effects of SrO addition

• Sr was considered as an excellent modifier for improving anti-carbon ability.
• Conversion and reforming activities were evidently heightened.
• The addition of SrO increased the interaction between NiO and support.
• The NCA/5%SrO catalyst is capable of regeneration.
• The H2 selectivity over NCA/5%SrO reached by74.8% at 800 °C.

Steam reforming reactions of hydrocarbon fuels were investigated in a fixed bed tubular reactor over nickel supported on Ce–Al2O3 (NCA) bifunctional catalysts promoted with different content of SrO (NCA/x%SrO), in order to obtain high H2 yield with minimum deactivation by carbon deposition. Physicochemical characteristics of the catalysts were detected by using automatic adsorption instrument, X-ray diffraction, Temperature programmed reduction/desorption, Raman spectroscopy, and Scanning/transmission electron microscope-energy dispersive spectrometer. It was found that the catalytic activities over series NCA/x%SrO catalysts were obviously improved compared with CA catalyst at the range of 550 °C–800 °C, meanwhile the amount of carbon deposition was significantly decreased with the addition of SrO promoter. In addition, the promotion effect became more stable when the introduction of SrO, which indicated that SrO played an essential role in the catalytic action. The regeneration experiments over the same NCA/5%SrO catalyst were performed three times, and the reforming activities were quite close to the results of fresh ones. The valuable information indicated in this work is that based on the specific properties of NCA/x%SrO, three kinds of metal particles can be introduced into Al2O3 by different way, which should be an effective approach to maintain both catalytic activities, thermal stability and anti-carbon ability.

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