Hydrogen production from the steam reforming of methanol over Au/Fe₂O₃-CeO₂ catalysts

Abstract

Steam reforming of methanol has been performed on a variety of supported Au catalysts. In this work, the catalysts were prepared by deposition-precipitation (DP) and their catalytic activity were studied in a micro-reactor with various reaction temperatures ranging from 250 to 450 °C under atmospheric pressure. A feed of 1.5 ml/hour of the mixture of distilled water and methanol over the supported Au catalyst was used. Among the catalysts tested, the 1% Au/Fe₂O₃-CeO₂ (l:8) gave a methanol conversion of 95% at 350°C, which was higher than those over Au/CeO₂ and Au/Fe₂O₃ under the same reaction conditions. The catalysts were characterized for their morphology, size of the Au particle, surface area, and reduction behavior by XRD, TEM, BET, and TPR, respectively. The XRD result of the 1% Au/Fe₂O₃-CeO₂ (1:8) revealed that there is no evidence of gold peaks, whereas in the TEM image, 3 to 4 nm sized gold particles were clearly observed. It was found that the addition of a small amount of Fe resulted in a remarkable increase in the surface area of the catalyst. In addition, the TPR profiles indicated that the combination of Fe₂O₃ and CeO₂ significantly influences the reduction temperature of the catalysts.