Catalisadores à base de Cu, Zn, Al e Ce aplicados à reação deslocamento gás-água

Abstract

The water gas-shift reaction (WGS) is an important step in the production process and purification of H2 from hydrocarbon. Commercially, to overcome the thermodynamic and kinetic limitations, this reaction occurs in two steps, one at higher temperature (450º C to 320ºC) and another step at lower temperature (190º C to 250ºC). The catalyst Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 is used industrially for water gas-shift reaction at low temperature in the chemical and petrochemical industry. Although widely used, are disagreements about the role of each metal in the catalyst, the role of Zn and Al as promoter or stabilizer is not clear and controversies about the influence of some parameters in the activity. This study verified the activity of the catalyst Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 in water gas-shift reaction in the range of temperature, 150ºC to 350ºC, and the feed molar ratio of CO: H2 equal to 1:5. The catalysts were prepared by co-precipitation method, and the effects of content of Al, ratio Cu/Zn and the CeO2 addition was investigated. There was a synergistic effect between the metals Cu-Zn-Al at a ratio (6:3:1), which led to a larger surface area of Cu metallic, and a higher activity compared to the catalysts bimetallics: CuAl (6:1) and CuZn (6:1). By adding Ce to the tri-metallic compound a greater activity was observed at higher temperature than 250ºC, caused by the activation of the effect of oxygen storage characteristic of cerium oxide, however it has been a reduction on stability. The quantity of Al influenced the precursor structure whith formation of rosasita and malachite with low levels of Al, and hydrotalcite structure was observed when the Al content was higher than 11.4% (mass concentration). A great quantity of Al (16% (mass concentration)) was found among the hydrotalcite catalysts, which led to a higher conversion of CO and higher crystallinity, however this activity is almost the same of the catalyst derived from the structures malachite and rosasita (CuZnAl/6:3:1) at high temperature. The catalyst whith Cu/Zn=2 presented higher activity at temperatures below 250ºC, probably due to the higher metallic area, while at high temperature, catalysts with high ratios of Cu/Zn achieved higher conversions. Therefore, this study verifies that TOF (turn over frequency) isn t directly related with surface area of Cu0, the crystallinity and quantity of Cu are factors that influenced the activity of the WGS reaction.