Employing Granulated Bimetallic Nanocomposite of Ni/Cu@CuMOF Nanocomposite in Steam Reforming of Methanol Process for Hydrogen Production

Conventional fossil-based energy sources have numerous environmental demerits; sustainable and renewable sources are attracting the undivided attention of researchers owing to their astounding physical and chemical features. Hydrogen as a green energy source is the most preferential source that has been employed in numerous industrial-scale technologies. Not only is hydrogen a potent energy carrier, but also it is not detrimental to the environment. Among many other hydrogen production processes, steam reforming of methanol (SRM) is deemed a practical method due to its low energy consumption. In this study, a metal-organic framework (copper benzenedicarboxylate (CuBDC)) has been utilized as a support of two various active metals, Cu and Ni in an SRM process (Ni/Cu@CuBDC). The catalyst is granulated with a self-created granulating machine in order to take a positive step toward utilizing the novel catalysts in a pilot scale process. Many characterization analyses (SEM, EDX, FTIR, XRD, BET, XPS, H2-TPR, CO2-TPD, and NH3-TPD) had been conducted in order to evaluate the accuracy of the synthetic catalysts and their performance. At the optimum temperature (300 ᵒC), which comparably is a low temperature for the SRM process, 99% methanol conversion with 98% H2 yield was achieved. Moreover, due to the employment of CuBDC as the support, the amount of acidic and basic active sites had been adjusted in a way that the CO selectivity of the process reached 3.59%.