Steam reforming of acetic acid for hydrogen production over bifunctional Ni–Co catalysts

Bio-oil derived from biomass can be used to produce hydrogen which will be a key player for global economy. In the present study steam reforming of acetic acid was conducted in a fixed bed reactor with different supported metal catalysts in a temperature range of 500–750 °C. In this study Ni–Co, Ni–Co/CeO2/ZrO2 and lanthanum oxide promoted Ni/La2O3/Al2O3 catalysts were prepared either by wet impregnation or by co-precipitation method and characterized by XRD, SEM–EDX, TG-DTA, BET and TEM analysis. It was found that bimetallic and without support catalyst Ni–Co (0.25:1) had higher activity and H2 yield compared with Ni–Co/CeO2/ZrO2 and 17% Ni/La2O3/Al2O3 catalysts. The effects of reaction temperature, space time (W/FA0), acetic acid feed concentration and time-on-stream were studied in detail over Ni–Co catalyst.