Autothermal Reforming Catalysts For Use In Fuel Processors For Automotive And Stationary H2 Production

Introduction Reforming (i.e., partial oxidation, steam reforming, or autothermal reforming (ATR)) of infrastructure fuels, such as natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, gasoline, or diesel, is one approach being investigated for distributed H2 production for use with fuel cell systems being developed for automotive and stationary applications. One area of interest is reforming gasoline either on-board the vehicle or at the service station (“fore court” concept) to produce H2 for automotive applications. One of the major challenges with reforming gasoline is the presence of sulfur, a known catalyst poison. Although the concentration of sulfur in gasoline in the U.S. is decreasing, to an average of 30 ppm beginning in 2006, the concentration is still high enough to negatively impact catalyst performance. Most new catalysts being developed for reforming gasoline are based on precious metals. Although precious metals are regarded as being more sulfur tolerant than commercial Ni steam reforming catalysts, they are susceptible to sulfur poisoning at this concentration. Since sulfur adsorption on to the active metal surface is the primary cause of catalyst poisoning, one must have an understanding of how the reaction parameters (e.g. temperature, steam-to-carbon ratio, fuel-to-air, etc.) influences the sulfur poisoning of the catalysts. The objective of this work is to investigate how the reaction temperature and the steam-to-carbon ratio affect the sulfur poisoning of Rh-based ATR catalyst.