Abstract
In order to study the steam reforming of methanol (SRM) to produce hydrogen for fuel cells, porous γ-alumina support is developed on Al substrate using anodic oxidation process and copper catalyst particles are deposited homogeneously over anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) surface by electrodeposition method. We investigated the effect of electrodeposition time and hot water treatment (HWT) on the activity of catalysts for SRM reaction in the temperature range between 160 and 360 °C. The experimental results indicate that the SRM activity, CO2 and dimethyl ether (DME) selectivity's over Cu catalysts increased as the electrodeposition time increased from 30 to 120 s, further increment in deposition time of Cu have no significant effect on it. The rates of SRM conversion are found to be higher for the catalysts made from the supports obtained after HWT, which may be due to the enhancement in the surface area of AAO support. It is found that the SRM activity and CO2 selectivity strongly depended upon the free exposed copper sites available for methanol adsorption and reaction, and DME in products is mainly observed in the reaction temperature range between 300 and 350 °C and it is higher for the catalysts with low Cu content.
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•A porous structured Al2O3/Al supported Cu catalyst was developed for SRM reaction.•SRM conversion and CO2 selectivity are increased with Cu content.•AAO surface area was enlarged with hot water treatment process.•The AAO-HWT supported catalysts series has shown higher SRM activity.