Steam Reforming of Ethanol: Production of Renewable Hydrogen

Abnormal growth of population and development enormously increases energy demand. In present scenario utilization of fossils fuels to meet this demand is not enough and also leads to pollution, global warming, climate change as well as natural disaster. Therefore, hydrogen as energy carrier is a major option on these prospects as it is non-polluting and renewable. The renewable hydrogen energy can be generated through ethanol steam reforming (ESR), a thermo-chemical method. Steam reforming is most widely used to generate hydrogen not only with nonrenewable fossil fuels (Coal, natural gas, petroleum) but also with renewable raw materials such as ethanol. In last two decades research interest in the area of catalytic steam reforming of ethanol has been increased. Ethanol contains higher number of hydrogen per molecule as compared to water, methanol and methane. During steam reforming of ethanol, catalyst plays a major role in the productivity and selectivity of generated gas. In the present paper, literature survey of noble (Pt, Pd, Rh and Ru) as well as non noble metals (Cu, Ni, Ir and Co) catalysts were accomplished. Study depicts that the different kinds of catalyst compositions of noble metal were reported as highly efficient whereas, the few nanosized non noble metal catalysts can be comparable to them, especially with respect to productivity and selectivity of hydrogen. An extensive research work over non noble metal catalysts is required to make ethanol steam reforming cheaper and efficient.