Catalytic steam reforming of in-situ tar from rice husk over MCM-41 supported LaNiO3 to produce hydrogen rich syngas

In this paper, a series of catalysts loaded with different amount of LaNiO3 on MCM-41 supported were studied for steam reforming of biomass tar reaction using in-situ tar in double fixed-bed. Different methods including XRD, N2 adsorption-desorption, SEM, XPS and TG-DTG were employed for characterization of fresh and spent catalysts. The results of low-angle XRD and N2-adsorption-desorption analysis shown that MCM-41 supported was successfully synthesized. In the first-stage fixed-bed, in-situ tar was produced by pyrolysis of rice husk at 450 °C. Simultaneously, the LaNiO3 and XLaNiO3/MCM-41 (X = 0.025, 0.05, 0.075 and 0.1) catalysts were investigated for hydrogen rich syngas production at various reforming temperature (500 °C–900 °C) and steam/carbon mass ratio (S/C = 0.6–1) in second-stage fixed-bed. Among all the catalysts, 0.1LaNiO3/MCM-41 catalyst displayed a higher gas yield of hydrogen (61.9Nm3/kg) at 800 °C and S/C (0.8). At the same conditions after five-time cycles, 0.1LaNiO3/MCM-41 showed a stable hydrogen gas composition of around 50%, and 0.1LaNiO3/MCM-41 catalyst was effective in catalysis of phenol compound in in-situ tar by GC-MS results. TGA-DTG and Raman analysis revealed the carbon deposition was mostly amorphous on 0.1LaNiO3/MCM-41, and lattice oxygen released to remove deposited carbon was the possible reason for 0.1LaNiO3/MCM-41 catalyst’s stable catalytic performance by XPS results.