Hydrogen at present is being produced at large quantities by steam reforming of methane at a reasonable cost for industrial purposes. However, the challenge with tomorrow’s hydrogen economic is the high cost of distributing hydrogen to dispersed locations. One solution to overcome this hurdle is through distributed small-scale hydrogen production. In this study, a simple reaction process which is potential for small-scale H2 production is reported where H2/syngas is generated by methane partial oxidation and cracking in the production step over structure perovskites oxide. In the regeneration stage, the oxygen depleted oxides can be recovered by oxidation by air.
Two series of perovskite oxides, i.e. (La0.7A0.3)FeO3 and (La0.7A0.3)CrO3 (A=Ba, Ca, Mg and Sr) were prepared by ball mining. The resulted mix oxides with stoichiometric ratios were calcined at 1200oC for 5 hour in air. The catalytic tests were carried out in a miro-reactor system consisted of a i.d. 10 mm quartz tube reactor with an on-line GC and MS to analyze the effluent gases. The doping effect on the reducibility of the oxides was studied by TPR.
XRD analysis confirmed of the formation of the ABO3 perovskite structure after the high temperature calcination. The reducibility of the oxides were greatly affected by A-site dopant and B site ion type. Among the tested oxides, (La0.7A0.3)FeO3 is the best one showing 90% CH4 conversion with almost 100% selectivity toward H2 at 850oC under 1 atm and 1515 h -1.