Hydrogen production from catalytic steam reforming of glycerol over various supported nickel catalysts

Supported Ni catalysts have been investigated for hydrogen production from steam reforming of glycerol. Ni loaded on Al2O3, La2O3, ZrO2, SiO2 and MgO were prepared by the wet-impregnation method. The catalysts were characterized by nitrogen adsorption-desorption, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. The characterization results revealed that large surface area, high dispersion of active phase on support, and small crystalline sizes are attributes of active catalyst in steam reforming of glycerol to hydrogen. Also, higher basicity of catalyst can limit the carbon deposition and enhance the catalyst stability. Consequently, Ni/Al2O3 exhibited the highest H2 selectivity (71.8%) due to small Al2O3 crystallites and large surface area. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) could accurately predict the experimental results with R-square = 0.868 with only 4.5% error. The highest H2 selectivity of 86.0% was achieved at optimum conditions: temperature = 692 °C, feed flow rate = 1 ml/min, and water glycerol molar ratio (WGMR) 9.5:1. Also, the optimization results revealed WGMR imparted the greatest effect on H2 selectivity among the reaction parameters.