Preparation and characterization of CuO/ZnO–Al2O3 catalyst washcoats with CeO2 sols for autothermal reforming of methanol in a microreactor

Porous alumina support CuO/ZnO mixed with CeO2 sols washcoat catalysts have been synthesized and characterized for the autothermal reforming of methanol in the present study. Experimentally, the BET N2 adsorption for as-synthesized catalysts and catalyst mixtures with three different CeO2 sols washcoats were 26, 31, 43, and 62 m2 g−1, respectively. In addition, porosity of the catalyst is decreased significantly after certain amount of higher loading of the binder as confirmed using FE-SEM and BET measurements. The intensities of XRD and XPS data indicate that catalyst content copper species strongly interact with CeO2 to from Cu–O–Ce. The EPR spectrum may reveal that Cu species may be mainly interacted with Ceria. The EXAFS data reveals that the Cu species have a Cu–O bonding with a bond distance of 1.99 ± 0.02 Å and coordination number is 3.24. Moreover, a hydrogen production rate of 2.16 L h−1 was obtained and the corresponding methanol conversion was 95% at 240 °C using the CuO/ZnO with 2 wt.% CeO2 sol washcoat catalysts.