Ceria-promoted Ni/SBA-15 catalysts for ethanol steam reforming with enhanced activity and resistance to deactivation.

This paper describes the synthesis of CeO 2 -promoted Ni/SBA-15 catalysts (denoted as CeNi/SBA-15) via a surfactant-assisted iso-volumetric impregnation method and their application in ethanol steam reforming. Various techniques including N 2 adsorption–desorption, X-ray diffraction, H 2 temperature-programmed reduction, temperature-programmed oxidation, transmission electron microscopy and thermogravimetric analysis were employed to characterize the prepared and spent catalysts. The results showed that the incorporation of CeO 2 could effectively control the particle size of Ni via strong metal-support interaction and promote the homogeneous distribution of Ni and Ce to achieve large Ni–CeO 2 interface. Consequently, the CeNi/SBA-15 catalysts exhibited superior activity with respect to the reference Ni/SBA-15 catalyst without ceria addition. The effect of ceria loading on the properties of the catalysts was also investigated, and the catalyst with Ce/Ni atomic ratio of 1 was the optimized composition owing to its strong metal-support interaction and high nickel active surface area. The ceria-promoted catalysts showed enhanced long-term stability in ethanol steam reforming. The strong interaction between Ni and CeO 2 , as well as the confinement of SBA-15 support restricted the nickel particle growth under harsh reaction conditions. Additionally, the ceria promoter contributed to suppressing coke deposition effectively, which led to the enhanced coking-resistance as observed on CeNi/SBA-15 catalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]