Exploration of ceramic supports to be used in membrane reactors for hydrogen production and separation

Abstract

The objective of this study is to develop ceramic supports employed in the preparation of catalytic membrane reactor using less catalyst and lower temperature and enabling H-2 production and separation together through the dry reforming of methane. For this reason, nine different ceramic supports are fabricated by using three different types of activated alumina (acidic, basic and neutral) and three different Si/Al molar ratios at two different calcination temperatures in order to investigate the surface acidity and basicity effect of supports to be used with impregnated Rh catalyst for rising the activity to CH4, CO2 and sensitivity to coke formation encountered with Ni-based catalysts. Subsequently, the effect of those variations on supports is determined by using XRD, SEM and BET instruments, in addition to this, H-2 permeability test of five supports having high BET surface areas is also performed with using constant volume-variable pressure technique at the temperatures of between 25 and 250 degrees C. Acidic alumina sintered at 600 degrees C and containing Si/Al ratio of 0.648 represented the highest hydrogen permeability with higher activity, whereas, neutral alumina calcined at the temperature of 600 degrees C having Si/Al ratio of 0.555 gave the highest activity with the lower hydrogen permeability, while basic alumina sintered at the temperature of 600 degrees C and including Si/Al ratio of 0.648 imparted lower activity with higher hydrogen permeability. (C) 2020 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.