Influence of Glycerol/Nitrates Ratio on Microwave Assisted Combustion Synthesis of CuO-ZnO-Al 2O3 Nanocomposite Used in Hydrogen Production from Methanol

In recent decades, the utilization of hydrogen as a clean energy carrier due to environmental problems of fossil fuels is highly regarded. In order to produce on-board hydrogen from methanol as an effective method for applying feed of fuel cell vehicles, in this paper CuO-ZnO-Al2O3 nanocomposites are used. These nanocomposites were synthesized by the fast and simple microwave assisted combustion method. Considering that the fuel/nitrates ratio is one of the effective parameters on quality of the prepared nanocomposite, the effect of glycerol to nitrates ration were investigated in this study. XRD, FESEM, FTIR, EDX, and BET analyses were used to determine the physicochemical properties of fabricated nanocomposites. These analyses suggested that increasing of this ratio led to decrease of zinc oxide crystallinity. Also the change of this ratio resulted an optimum of active phase dispersion and surface area. The catalytic experiments results proved that enhancement of glycerol/nitrates ratio to methanol conversion have an optimum value which is 2. As a result, the CZAG/N2 due to higher surface area and dispersion of active phase has higher methanol conversion. Also, the stability results of this sample for 1440 minutes showed that no significant change in methanol conversion and products selectivity.