Promoting hydrogen-rich syngas production from catalytic reforming of biomass pyrolysis oil on nanosized nickel-ceramic catalysts

Highlights: • A nanosized nickel-ceramic catalyst was developed for pyrolysis bio-oil reforming. • NiO particles are in the range of 30–40 nm with a multilayer structure. • The maximum hydrogen yield reached 89.17 g H₂/kg tar at 700 °C and S/C = 2.6. • A low activation energy (25.34 kJ mol^–1) was obtained from kinetic studies. - Abstract: Catalytic reforming of real biomass pyrolysis oil (BPO) was carried out with a nano-Ni/ceramic foam catalyst using a fixed bed reactor. XRD, TPR, SEM/EDX and BET were used to characterize the synthesized catalysts. The analysis results showed that nickel oxide was in-situ reduced to active nickel metal during the steam reforming process and the size of NiO particles loaded on the surface of ceramic foam was in the range of 30–40 nm. NiO nanoparticles showed a homogeneous multilayer deposition on the surface of the catalyst and the BET surface area of the fresh catalyst was increased with the increase of Ni loading. The effects of calcination temperature, reaction temperature and weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) on hydrogen production were studied. The results showed that the yields of hydrogen and gas were decreased with the calcination temperature increasing from 400 to 700 °C. The yield of H₂ were in the range of 44.41–89.17 g H₂ kg⁻¹ BPO when the reaction temperatures varied from 500 to 800 °C. The hydrogen yield was decreased with the increase of WHSV, and a low activation energy (25.34 kJ mol⁻¹) was obtained from kinetic studies, indicating the effectiveness of the nano-Ni/ceramic foam catalyst.