(455b) Highly Active Molybdenum Dioxide Catalysts for the Partial Oxidation of Biodiesel
AIChE Annual Meeting
2010
2010 Annual Meeting
Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division
Catalytic Hydrogen Generation for Fuel Cell Applications I
Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - 12:55pm to 1:20pm
Molybdenum dioxide (MoO2) catalysts exhibit high activity for the production of syngas via partial oxidation of biodiesel. Our findings indicate that commercial and nanoparticle MoO2 catalysts display similar activity at 850°C, 1 atm and O2/C = 0.7, with conversions higher than 95% and hydrogen yields of 40%. However, the addition of small amounts of nickel in the catalyst composition appears to significantly increase the hydrogen production and the conversion to 50% and 100%, respectively. The catalyst performance displays high sensitivity to the reducing strength of reforming environment. Thus, when the O2/C ratio was reduced to 0.5 the MoO2 catalyst showed the highest performance with a hydrogen yield of 80% and a conversion of 100%. The synergistic effect observed for Ni-promoted MoO2 catalysts can be attributed to the combination of active sites which increase the catalyst ability to break not only C-C but also C-H bonds.