Abstract
In this paper, the renewable hydrogen generation through oxidative steam reforming of ethanol has been investigated over bimetallic Pt-Ni/CeO2-SiO2 catalysts, prepared by sequential wet impregnation at different loadings of noble metals (0-3 wt%); temperature ranged from 300 to 600°C and the H2O/C2H5OH as well as O2/C2H5OH ratios were fixed, respectively, to 4 and 0.5. The samples were characterized by BET, XRD and TPR analysis. Despite the very low contact time selected (25 ms), all the bimetallic samples displayed ethanol conversions higher than 50% above 450°C; however, the selectivity in hydrogen generation decreased with the Pt content. It indicates that low platinum loading are sufficient to assure a promising performance for the investigated reaction, thus assuring a considerable reduction of the catalyst cost. An experimental kinetic investigation was also carried out on the most interesting bimetallic sample in comparison with the monometallic catalyst in order to predict the evolution of product species with reaction temperature.
