Oxidative steam reforming of acetic acid on Ni catalysts: Influence of the La promotion on mesostructured supports

In this work, the support effect and the La2O3 promotion of Ni-based catalysts on the oxidative steam reforming of acetic acid as bio-oil model compound has been studied. Ni/SBA-15 showed the worst catalytic performance with an acetic acid conversion dropping below 30% at 500 ºC ascribed to active phase oxidation. In contrast, Ni supported over mesoporous CeO2 (CeO2-m) reached better catalytic performance and lower coke formation due to the higher Ni dispersion and oxygen mobility of the support. On the other hand, La2O3 promotion to SBA-15 and CeO2-m led to even higher Ni dispersion and prevented sintering during the reforming reaction. This effect resulted in an improvement in the catalytic performance for both promoted samples. As a consequence of low Ni crystallite size and high oxygen mobility, Ni/La2O3-CeO2-m reached almost complete conversion (~ 96%), the highest hydrogen yield (~ 53%) maintained for 5 h with the lowest coke formation (62.3 mgcoke·gcat 1·h 1).