Pre-reforming of jet fuels on modified RH/CEO₂-Al₂O₃ catalysts for micro solid oxide fuel cells

The effects of precursors and NH₄OH treatment of Rh catalysts supported on CeO₂-promoted Al₂O₃ for steam reforming of liquid hydrocarbon fuel (jet fuel) for micro solid oxide fuel cell applications were studied. Impurity chlorine in the RhCl/CeO₂-Al₂O₃ catalyst was detrimental to the steam reforming of higher hydrocarbons at lower temperature. This might be explained by a blocked and thus decreased accessible active surface sites as a consequence of the chemical interaction of the halogen with the catalyst surface. Removal of residual Cl- from RhCl/CeO₂-Al₂O₃ by NH₄OH treatment improved the metal dispersion and showed higher, and stable, activity for pre-reforming of model jet fuels. The pre-reformates from the current pre-reformer contained mainly CH₄, CO, H₂, in which CH₄ could be further converted to H₂ and CO by subsequent main-reforming, or directly used for a micro solid oxide fuel cell. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 227th ACS National Meeting (Anaheim, CA 3/28/2004-4/1/2004).