Oxidative steam reforming of ethanol for hydrogen production over Nano-CeO₂ supported Ni-Rh bimetallic catalyst

The influential factors affecting the catalytic performance of nano-sized CeO₂ supported Ni-Rh bimetallic catalysts in the oxidative steam reforming (OSR) of ethanol were studied for hydrogen production and fuel cell applications. The effect of Ni and Rh loadings on the ethanol conversion and product selectivity in the oxidative steam reforming of ethanol was investigated at 300°C. Under the conditions used, the catalysts containing Rh alone exhibited 80-92% ethanol conversion while the catalyst containing Ni without Rh showed only about 40 %. Rh was more effective in reforming of ethanol compared to Ni. The addition of about 5 wt % of Ni in the Rh/CeO₂ catalyst reduced the CO selectivity with consequent increase in the selectivity of H₂ and CO₂ indicating that the added Ni favors water-gas shift reaction. However, a Ni content of more than 5 wt % caused an increase in CH₄ selectivity, probably due to the hydrogenation of CO/CO₂ to CH₄. The effect of reaction conditions, i.e., temperature, H₂O/ethanol (EtOH) ratio, O₂/EtOH ratio, were also studied over Ni(5)Rh(1)/CeO₂ catalyst. From this work, a new Ni-Rh bimetallic catalyst supported on high-surface-area CeO₂ was developed for the oxidative steam reforming of ethanol at relatively low temperature, around 450°C to produce H₂ with very low CO in the outlet. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 231st ACS National Meeting (Atlanta, GA 3/26-30/2006).