Partial oxidation of ethanol to hydrogen over Ni-Fe catalysts

Catalytic generation of hydrogen by partial oxidation of ethanol over a series of Ni-Fe catalysts has been studied. The catalytic performances have been investigated over various O-2/C2H5OH molar ratio at 473 similar to 573 K. These Ni-Fe catalysts showed high performances for the partial oxidation of ethanol to hydrogen and Ni50Fe50 catalyst had the best activity when reaction temperature was between 548K and 573 K. The optimum reaction conditions for Ni50Fe50 catalyst are O-2/C2H5OH = 1.0, T=573 K. The fresh and used catalysts were characterized by XRD and XPS. The XRD patterns showed the main components of the active catalysts are the spinal-type structure of magnetite and FeNi3 alloy (see Fig. 4). The decrease in the selectivity for hydrogen of the catalyst may be resulted from the conversion of FeNi3 alloy phase in the catalyst during long term reaction (see Fig. 5), XPS results confirmed that the phase of the bulk catalyst is mainly FeNi3 alloy and that of the surface catalyst is mainly magnetite (see Fig 6).