Magnetic inducement during the preparation of doped alumina catalyst support for alcohol steam reforming

Magnetic inducement is explored for its ability to control and improve the properties of mixed oxide supports for alcohol steam reforming. Ceria- and gadolinia-doped alumina supports can improve catalytic activity and mitigate coke formation from their oxygen storage capacity. In this study, magnetic inducement is applied during the synthesis of mixed oxide systems involving paramagnetic and diamagnetic ions, which are ceria-doped, gadolinia-ceria-doped, and zirconia-doped alumina. The applied magnetic field has 2 arrangements, which are a) between same magnetic poles (N-N) and b) between opposite magnetic poles (N-S). The supports were characterized for their physical and chemical properties, then evaluated in terms of hydrogen production rate from ethanol or methanol steam reforming. It was found that the catalysts loaded on ceria-doped alumina and gadolinia-ceria-doped alumina supports prepared under N-N magnetic inducement showed the highest hydrogen production due to the superior Ce distribution. Rotating magnetic inducement that was applied to ceria-doped alumina supports resulted in support properties that are less prominent than their stationary counterparts. This is the opposing magnetic field induced from the electric field created in time-varying magnetic field, according to Lenz’s Law. Zirconia can also be used to control surface acidity of the doped alumina support. On the other hand, the effect of magnetic fields on gadolinia dopant in gadolinia-ceria-doped alumina could not be observed, so magnetic inducement may not be useful in controlling the properties of supports with more than one paramagnetic dopant. Magnetic inducement, however, could influence the property of zirconia-doped alumina supports, which consist only of diamagnetic species. Both N-N and N-S magnetic inducement led to an improvement in catalytic activity for ethanol steam reforming, even though they affected the supports’ surface acidity differently. In addition, effects of magnetic inducement during Cu-Zn catalyst loading on gamma-alumina were investigated for hydrogen production from methanol steam reforming. Rotating magnetic inducement resulted in improvement in hydrogen production rates compared to the non-magnetic and the stationary magnetic field counterparts. This was due to lower reduction temperatures of copper active metal, which could imply a change in dispersion of copper and zinc atoms on the support. The influence of magnetic inducement becomes less noticeable on non-porous, alpha-alumina, so it is expected that magnetic inducement may affect the solution viscosity and the formation of Cu-Zn in the alumina porous structure. Therefore, magnetic inducement can be used during both active metal loading and support synthesis to control the properties of a bimetallic catalyst and the mixed oxide supports, respectively.