Liu Wei,Zhang Guoliang,Hao Songyuan,Yuan Hong,He Weidong
Waste cooking oils (WCOs) are a cheap and rich source of carbon and hydrogen, and they exhibit great potential for the preparation of hydrogen gas and carbon nanomaterials. Here, we prepared three Pt–Ni/SBA-15 catalysts with Pt contents ranging from 0 to 2% to examine their activity in the catalytic cracking of WCO towards the production of hydrogen and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). A mixture of soybean oil, oleic acid and animal fat was used as a model compound of WCO, and the catalysts were characterised by inductively coupled plasma–optical emission spectrometry, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, N 2 adsorption–desorption isotherms, temperature programmed reduction, thermogravimetric analysis and Raman spectroscopy. The effect of Pt loading and cracking temperature on the hydrogen production and the quality of CNTs was also evaluated. Among the prepared catalysts, 2%Pt–30%Ni/SBA-15 showed excellent catalytic activity at 750 °C, affording a maximum hydrogen content of 66.2 vol%, while CNTs with diameters of 20–100 nm and high crystallinity, oxidation stability, graphitisation and purity were also prepared.
As the only H 2 resource on aircraft from the steam reforming of the jet fuels on board, catalytic steam reforming of JP-10 (one of Jet fuels) over nickel-based catalyst Ni/SBA-15 were first carried out in a fixed bed tube reactor to produce hydrogen on-site or on board. A series of Ni/SBA-15 catalysts with different Ni content (3, 5, 8 and 10.8 wt%) were prepared by a modified incipient wetness impregnation method with addition of sucrose as ligand. And the effect of operation conditions of temperature (630–700 °C), nickel loading, liquid hour space velocity (LHSV = 5, 10, 15 ml/g cat ·h), steam to carbon molar ratio (S/C = 3, 5) on the catalytic activity and selectivity was investigated. It was found that 8Ni/SBA-15 was the optimal catalyst for steam reforming of JP-10 even with a higher LHSV and fuel gas concentration, and approximately 100% conversion of JP-10 with over 80% selectivity to hydrogen under the recommended experimental conditions of 680 °C, S/C of 5, LHSV of 10 ml/g cat ·h. The catalytic activity of 8Ni/SBA-15 dropped slowly to 84% after 6.5 h in the stability test and the carbon deposited was less with just 6% mass loss from TGA measurement (coke deposition rate 0.01g C /g cat h), which ascribed to possible reasons including confine effect of mesochannel of SBA-15, strengthened structure of mesochannels due to embeded Ni particles, and higher temperature to suppress the main carbon producing reaction.