Reactivity of Pt/Ni supported on CeO2-nanorods on methanol steam reforming for H2 production: Steady state and DRIFTS studies

The reactivity of the PtNi supported on CeO₂-nanorods was performance on methanol steam reforming (MSR). CO_ads revealed that outer of the PtNi-catalyst could be mainly Pt-terminated and, CO_ads was slightly attenuated on the surface of the CeO₂-R. The catalytic performance of the bimetallic PtNi/CeO₂-NR catalyst exhibited better methanol conversion and H₂ selectivity than the monometallic samples. The surface species associated with the reaction mechanism from TPD-MSR-DRIFTS identified on the CeO₂-NR sample showed stronger bands associated at the methoxy species complemented with stretching C–H bands, while on the Pt/CeO₂-NR catalyst, the methoxy groups diminish indicating that it decomposes to CO and hydrogen and, new peaks of formate (HCOO^?) groups emerge. This finding suggests that the methoxy groups interacted with the surface oxygen of the support during the reaction to yield formate species and the Pt had important role to promote it as intermediary of the reaction.