Preparation and characterization of Fe/ Ah03 catalyst for steam reforming of ethanol

This project is mainly about the preparation of the alumina supported catalyst for the
steam reforming of ethanol. The catalyst which needs to be prepared is Fe/Ah03. Mostly in
industry steam reforming is mainly used for methanol and ethanol which source from the
natural gas. This process widely used to obtain hydrogen gases which are one of the
alternative sources of energy for fuel oil. The main problem in this project is how to prepare
the Fe/Ah03 catalyst in a lab scale and to do the characterization of the catalyst itself. To
obtain a well structured catalyst, a thorough research on the method of preparation is made
which the scope covers mostly about precipitation and impregnation method. Both
precipitation and impregnation methods have different steps in preparation which leads to the
same output product which is the catalyst. Impregnation method will have the prepared
solution having the metal precursor to fill in the pore structure of the support bodies while
precipitation process consist of preparation of the support itself from the molecular level
then follows the same steps in impregnation method. From the findings throughout certain
researches in the industrial production, impregnation method implies better result in a lab
scale production. Thus, further studies in impregnation method are required for the
preparation of catalyst through experiment. Once the procedure and operating parameters are
identified, then the experiments for the catalyst preparation will be conducted.