Hydrogen Production Via Aqueous Phase Reforming Of Glucose

• Main Author: Nur Zailie B. Ali Hassan, Nur Zailie
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2010
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/1222/1/NUR_ZAILIE_BIN_ALI_HASSAN.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/1222/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Petronas

Aqueous-phase reforming (APR) is a relatively recent technology for producing hydrogen from biomass-derived substrates. Amidst the worldwide concerns about increasing petroleum prices and declining supplies, this process has the potential to address the need for a readily-available source of energy that is renewable and environment-friendly. APR uses temperatures much lower than those used in existing thermochemical methods for biomass: ~500K as opposed to about 600K to 1100K for pyrolysis and gasification. The reaction occurs in aqueous phase in the presence of a reforming metal catalyst that can catalyze both reforming and water-gas shift reactions. To date, known APR studies dealt only with applying this technology to oxygenated compounds that were used to mimic biomass. However, it is considered that application of APR to real biomass is needed to gauge whether this technology can be considered a viable approach for hydrogen production. This study deals with the first known application of APR for the production of H2 from actual biomass. For this project glucose was used. The experiments were carried out in batch using a 100mL Parr High Pressure Reactor heated to 230°C. These simple compounds were then reformed using a Pt/Al2O3 catalyst. The gas-phase products were typically H2, CO2 and CO. Gas Chromatograph (GC) with thermal conductivity detectors (TCD) were used in order to quantify the gas phase. The objective of this research is to carry out a series of hydrogen generation experiments at varying conditions to study the effects of catalyst concentration, and temperature. Consequently, the optimum state for hydrogen production from glycerol can be determined and a processor is designed to produce the hydrogen at its maximum yield. Final Year Project Report Hydrogen Production Via Aqueous Phase Reforming Of Glucose iii The amounts of catalyst concentration used are 1 wt%, 3 wt% and 5 wt%. Effect of increasing catalyst concentration from 1 wt% to 3 wt% for 90 minutes reaction duration had shown the hydrogen yield increase by 18.87% from 0.6745679 moles at 230 deg C then decreases to 5.20% to 0.7601504 moles at 5wt% of catalyst. Similar trend is also observed for 90 minutes duration where the maximum point of hydrogen yield is at 3wt% Platinum Alumina catalyst. Effect of temperature has a great effect on the hydrogen yield. When the temperature for 3 wt% catalyst is increased from 210 deg C to 230 deg C, the hydrogen yield has increased 97% from 20.31 moles to 40.09 moles. The same type of graph also observed at concentration of catalyst at 1 and 5 wt%. The optimum condition to produce maximum yield of hydrogen is at 230 deg C and 3wt% of catalyst concentration. For catalyst characterization, we only focused on catalyst sizes of fresh catalyst and spent catalyst. Based on the result there is no significant change to catalyst size and it eliminate the probable cause of the loss of H2 chemisorptions of the spent catalyst due to loss of Pt.