Biomass has the potential to serve as a sustainable source of energy and organic carbon for our industrialized society. The focus of this Review is to present an overview of chemical catalytic transformations of biomass-derived oxygenated feedstocks (primarily sugars and sugar-alcohols) in the liquid phase to value-added chemicals and fuels, with specific examples emphasizing the development of...

There are substantial barriers to the introduction of hydrogen fuel cells for transportation, including the high cost of fuel-cell systems, the current lack of a hydrogen infrastructure, and the relatively low fuel efficiency when using hydrogen produced from hydrocarbons. Here, we describe a solid oxide fuel cell that combines a catalyst layer with a conventional anode, allowing internal refor...

Fuel cell powered electric cars using on-board methanol or hydrocarbon reforming to produce a hydrogenrich gas represent a low-emissions alternative to gasoline internal combustion engines (ICE) with well-towheel efficiencies of 17 %. For the overall methanol process, a simplified model of the reaction network consisting of the total oxidation of methanol, the reverse water-gas shift reaction, ...

Hydrogen production through steam reforming of ethanol was investigated with conventional supported nickel catalysts and a Ni-containing smectite-derived catalyst. The former is initially active, but significant catalyst deactivation occurs during the reaction due to carbon deposition. Side reactions of the decomposition of CO and CH4 are the main reason for the catalyst deactivation, and these...

A catalyst and sorbent is disclosed which comprises pellets with an absorbent core and a protective shell with a catalyst in the shell. Such material is especially well suited for steam reforming of hydrocarbons to produce hydrogen since a reforming catalyst can be incorporated in the shell and a sorbent for the by-product carbon dioxide can be used for the core. It is also well suited for prod...

The photocatalytic methanol reforming reaction has been studied using many different Pd/Pt loaded TiO2 powdered catalysts, focussing on the effect of weight loading and reaction phase on the rate of hydrogen production. The palladium/platinum weight loading dependence in the gas and liquid phase showed that independent of the phase of reaction, the amount of hydrogen produced from methanol refo...

A compact reformer to generate hydrogen for portable fuel cell applications is presented. This reformer is a conventional type single-path tubular reactor packed with granular catalyst particles in which steam reforming and catalytic partial oxidation reactions take place in series using a mixture of methanol and water as a feed. The novel feature of this reformer is in the interlacing of the f...

The possibility of optimizing the composition and the structures of the nickel catalysts and the pretreatment and reaction conditions for carbon dioxide reforming with methane is investigated. The optimum catalyst and the pretreatment and reaction conditions are determined employing the orthogonal and uniform design methods. The optimum nickel catalyst gives promising catalytic performance in t...

Aqueous phase reforming of glycerol was studied over a series of γ-Al2O3 supported metal nanoparticle catalysts for hydrogen production in a batch reactor. Of the metals studied, Pt/Al2O3 was found to be the most active catalyst under the conditions tested. A further systematic study on the impact of reaction parameters, including stirring speed, pressure, temperature, and substrate/metal molar...

The dimethyl ether steam reforming reaction to generate hydrogen was tested over 1 wt % Pd/Al2O3 catalysts prepared from different precursors. The conventional catalyst prepared by incipient wetness impregnation from palladium nitrate underwent strong deactivation under reforming conditions at 823 K because of metal sintering and carbon deposition. The same occurred over the catalyst prepared f...