Hydrogen production via catalytic propane partial oxidation over Ce1-xMxNiO3-λ (M=Al, Ti and Ca) towards solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) applications

Abstract Indirect hydrogen production routes presented extensive compatibilities for distributed solid oxide fuel cell systems. Catalyst activity directly determines hydrogen production and profoundly affects the power generation. In this work, Ce1-xMxNiO3-λ (M = Al, Ti and Ca) were synthesized for hydrogen production from propane partial oxidation (POx). From the results, it indicated that the choice of catalyst compositions could directly affect the microstructure during the preparation process. Also, different Ce1-xMxNiO3-λ catalysts displayed distinctive carbon tolerance performances due to the different active particle sizes and surface properties of the catalysts. In general, the synthesized Ce1-xMxNiO3-λ catalysts showed higher hydrogen production than a commercial nickel cerium catalyst. From the observation of a SOFC test system powered by injecting the generated H2 from catalytic propane POx reaction, the obtained power density of CNO–Al displayed an increase of 22.6% compared to the commercial nickel cerium catalyst. It was quite impressive that the equivalent hydrogen (160 ml/min) produced over CNO–Al and the obtained power density (482.6 mW/cm2) of SOFCs were competitive while CNO–Ca presented an excellent stability with a better carbon tolerance performance for the long-term tests. The achievements of this work might offer a novel point of view for developing low-cost catalyst towards indirect hydrogen production for SOFC.