The development of alternative method for syngas production, especially from renewable
source, have attracting much attention due to the expected increasing demand for energy
together with environmental concerns related to reducing atmospheric pollution.
Ethanol has proposed as alternative fuel for the indirect internal reformer of molten carbonate
fuel cells (IIR-MCFCs) and in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). Ethyl alcohol is more preferable,
as hydrogen sources, than others, since it can be easily produced from biomass by fermentation.
Moreover, ethanol has shown good features for hydrogen production and it owns a series of
advantages: (i) high hydrogen content, (ii) good availability and low production costs, (iii) easy
and save handling and transportation, (iv) non-toxicity and (v) the possibility of distribution in a
logistic net similar to the conventional fuel stations.
One of the current major problems and therefore one of the greatest challenges in catalytic
reforming of ethanol is improvement in catalyst stability, arising from deposition of carbon due
to C-C bond scission. Aside from noble metals, Ni is so far the best choice for hydrogen
production by catalytic reforming of ethanol. Ni, in fact, has high activity for C-C bond and O-H
bond breaking and it also has high activity for hydrogenation, facilitating H atoms to form
molecular H2. However, Ni-based catalysts suffer of more coke formation than noble metal
catalyst. Support also plays an important role in reforming reactions of ethanol, as it affects the
dispersion of metal catalyst and may enhance metal catalyst activity via metal-support
interaction.
In this work, we have investigated and compared the catalytic behaviours of commercial γ-
Al2O3, zeolites and like-zeolite materials, used as nickel support in different reactions, such as
steam reforming (SR), partial oxidation (POX) and autothermal reforming (ATR) of ethanol, at
the temperature of 700 °C, to produce syngas.