Steam reforming of biomass tar model compound over two waste char-based Ni catalysts for syngas production

The removal of biomass tar is the key technology in the pyrolysis and gasification technology, and the advantages of solid waste pyrolysis char in tar removal gradually become prominent. In this paper, the tar model compound (benzene) was catalytic reformed by a novel hybrid carrier catalysts using a laboratory dual-stage reactor. The hybrid carrier catalyst was prepared by wet impregnation method with nickel active substance, and the carrier was a two-material mixture of peat char and sludge char. In the reaction of steam reforming benzene, the effects of temperature (600–800 °C) and nickel load (5%–20%) on benzene conversion were investigated, showing that the catalyst have good benzene removal ability (91.8%) and the gas product with high syngas content (93.6%) was obtained. The surface properties of the catalyst was detected by SEM, EDS, BET and XRD detection, in order to prove that the catalytic performance was related to surface nanoparticles and abundant active sites. The novel hybrid carrier catalyst can effectively remove the aromatic tar and produce syngas with high performance.