Development of new nickel based catalyst for biomass tar steam reforming producing H 2-rich syngas

Mayenite (Ca 12Al 14O 33 or 12CaO.7Al 2O 3) was previously developed and applied as Ni support for biomass tar steam reforming in the absence and presence of H 2S by our group because of its high oxygen restoring property in the structure [C. Li et al., Appl. Catal., B. 2008]. In this study, catalyst Ni/mayenite (mayenite as support) was prepared by impregnation method with nickel nitrate hexahydrate. Experiments were tested in a fixed-bed reactor, toluene as a tar model compound. The influence of the catalyst preparation and operating parameters (reaction temperature, steam to carbon ratio and space time) on catalyst activity and products selectivity were studied, and a long-time evaluation (more than 76 h) also exhibited excellent resistance to coking. These results were compared to these obtained by commercial-like catalysts: Ni/CaO x /MgO 1− x and our previous NiO/mayenite, showing that Ni/mayenite exhibited excellent property for biomass tar reforming, with higher H 2 yield than that of Ni/CaO x /MgO 1− x , and higher CO selectivity than that of NiO/mayenite. For kinetic model, the first order reaction used for toluene with activation energy of 80.24 kJ.mol − 1 was coincident with literature data.