The greater problem of the biodiesel production deals with its economical aspects. One of the factors with a very significant impact on the total manufacturing cost of this green biofuel regards to the possible commercial applications for the by-product glycerol. In fact, 100 tons of glycerol per 1000 tons of biodiesel are obtained when the biomass derived fats are transesterificated. Pure glycerol has a huge market. Taking into account this fact, purification and distillation processes are required to reach a purity of glycerol close to 99.9%. Both refining stages are complex and expensive, and they would increase the process total cost. Moreover, the storage of this by-product is becoming a problem for which is necessary to find a solution.In this work glycerol steam reforming for hydrogen production was studied using a micro reactor set up. For the catalytic system, a-alumina supported catalysts with the same Rh loading were designed basing on two different preparation methods in order to compare their activity; namely a common wash-coating procedure with subsequent impregnation and nanoparticle (Np) catalysts prepared according to a method described by Ashida et al. In addition, the support of the catalysts made by the wash coating procedure with subsequent impregnation was also modified with different contents of CeO2 and La2O3 oxides.

Gas generation in a microreactor from a renewable resource

246th National Meeting (2013)

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