Note: This paper can be downloaded for free from the journal of power sources website by clicking the link below.
Metal oxides as combustion catalysts for a stratified, dual bed partial oxidation catalyst.
B.N.T. Nguyen and C.A. Leclerc
What is it about??
This paper describes a new metal oxide catalyst for partial oxidation of methane to produce hydrogen. The major advantage of using this catalyst is the cost reduction instead of using a costly rare earth metal combination of Rhodium(which is supposed to be the best catalyst for Partial oxidation ) Platinum and Nickel, they use a new metal oxide combination consisting of manganese, chromium and copper. They show that the new metal oxide catalyst gives similar performance to that of platinum in terms of conversion of methane and slightly better selectivity to H2 than to CO ( as the difference in selectivity is below 4% and there is a lot of uncertainty in the measurement of selectivity they refrain from making this claim).
what is the major impact?
- One of the major reasons that steam reforming is still popular compared to partial oxidation reforming is the cost of the catalyst, by removing the noble metal catalyst POR becomes economically viable.
- No significant reduction in yield or selectivity compared to the costlier catalysts
- Catalyst degradation in terms of performance is negligible. (Some physical degradation was reported which has to be furhter investigated)
Apart from the fuel cell enthusiasts, I think this is an excellent article and a must read for a chemical reactor design course. It touches upon some of the basic factors to be considered in catalytic reactor design conversion, selectivity, feed stoichiometry and feed rate. Very well written and easy to follow for even an undergraduate.
Suggestions
- The paper does an excellent job of showing the different parameters that effect performance but I think a more detailed discussion part explaining the "why" would have added more value
- In the graphs(figures 2 and 3) instead of joining the points with curves it would be nice to have points with error bars based on the three experimental readings.
- Very well written, fluent and lucid english with no grammatical or typo errors.
