Steam reforming of methanol over GDC and metal loaded GDC catalysts prepared via sol-gel route

Abstract

GDC and metal loaded GDC were synthesized using the sol-gel method. The amount of gadolinium doped to ceria was fixed at 10% mole. Cu and Ni were chosen metal catalyst. The influence of hydrolysis molar ratio (h) and acid molar ratio (A) were found to affect the gel formation. The h and A condition, 29 and 0.3, respectively were selected to synthesize all catalysts. Various analyzing techniques, including TGA, XRD, BET, EDX, and TPR, were employed to characterize the obtained products. All products calcined at 500 °C were found to have fine crystallite size and high homogeneity. Their catalytic activities on methanol steam reforming were carried out in the temperature range 200-400 °C. The activity of GDC10 was compared with those of 10%Ni/GDC10, 20%Ni/GDC10, 10%Cu/GDC10, and 20%Cu/GDC10 20%Ni/GDC10 showed the highest activity at 400 °C, over 70% methanol conversion.