(370f) Characterization and H2 Production Performance of Cu and Zn Encapsulated MCM-41, TiO2 and CeO2 Catalysts

One-pot hydrothermal procedure was used for the synthesis of mesoporous high surface area SiO₂ (MCM-41), TiO₂ and CeO₂ containing Cu and Zn nanoparticles. The effect of metal (Cu and Zn)-support (SiO₂, TiO₂ and CeO₂) interactions on steam reforming of methanol (SRM) reactions to produce high quality H₂ has been investigated. Catalysts are thoroughly characterized using N₂ adsorption-desorption isotherms (BET), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermo-gravimetric and differential calorimetric analysis (TGA-DSC), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), and temperature programmed reduction (TPR) techniques. Preliminary characterization results indicate that the synthesized MCM-41 and TiO₂ catalysts yield high surface area in excess of 800 and 250 m²/g, respectively. While wide angle XRD studies confirmed the stability of hexagonal ordered mesoporous structure of the MCM-41, N₂ physisorption studies revealed the Type IV isotherms for TiO₂ indicating its mesoporous nature.  ICP and EDX studies demonstrated that the expected amounts of active metals are successfully retained in the support matrices showing the effectiveness of our one pot synthesis procedure. Initial SRM studies showed that both the type of active metal and the support have strong influence on the SRM activity and selectivity. For example, 10%Zn-TiO₂ and 10%Cu-TiO₂ showed similar methanol conversion of 90 % at 300 °C and 1:3 methanol mole ratio. However, 10%Zn-TiO₂ showed considerably lower CO selectivity of 2.35% compared to 69.92% exhibited by 10%Cu-TiO₂. The results from our ongoing experiments will be presented.