Production of hydrogen from methane over lanthanum supported bimetallic catalysts

Hydrogen production as a clean source of energy has drawn the attention of many researchers in recent decades. Hydrogen, an environment-friendly source of energy, enjoys many applications such as fuel cells, spaceships and production of lighter petroleum fractions from heavy ones. Catalytic decomposition of methane has recently attracted researchers for the production of COx-free hydrogen. In this work, catalytic decomposition of methane was investigated for the production of hydrogen over bimetallic Ni and Co based catalysts supported on La₂O₃. Bimetallic catalysts having 12.5wt% each of Ni and Co were prepared by the co-precipitation technique. The activity tests were performed in a fixed bed micro-activity reactor. The effect of different calcination temperatures was studied. The 12.5NCL catalyst calcined at 500 °C provided the highest hydrogen yield at 700 °C reaction temperature and a volume hourly space velocity of 5000 L.h^-1.kg_cat^-1 The catalysts were characterized by BET, TGA, XRD, TPR and TEM before and after reaction.