Hydrogen production from aqueous phase reforming of glycerol: Thermodynamic analysis and experimental validation

Hydrogen production from biomass-derived glycerol can be conducted by different reforming pathways. Thermodynamics analysis in this work presented that aqueous phase reforming (APR) is prior to steam reforming (STR) process with regard to CO level, and methanation should be limited kinetically in APR process to maximize hydrogen generation. Experimental work demonstrated that methanation could be suppressed by careful selection of catalyst, and a platinum catalyst was seen to behave better than a nickel catalyst. In addition, the distribution of gas products was much closer to the thermodynamic calculations (without methanation) over platinum-catalyst than that over nickel-catalyst.