High-purity H2 production from biomass through cascade processes based on alkaline thermal treatment

A cascade process consisting of three techniques of alkaline thermal treatment, catalytic steam reforming, and alkali absorption is introduced to produce high-purity H 2 . The effect of NaOH and biomass molar ratio is investigated for H 2 production, and the interactions between the three components was carried out specially to investigate the effect on H 2 and CH 4 production for the alkaline thermal treatment of real biomass. Synthesized mesoporous 10 wt% Ni/Al 2 O 3 catalyst is applied in steam reforming of CH 4 . The NaOH supported on CaO was used for the absorption of CO and CO 2 during the alkali absorption process. The results show that the high H 2 production of 68.04 mmol g −1 cellulose with a purity of 99.93 vol% is achieved under optimized conditions. The cascade process for sawdust results in a 103% increase in H 2 production compared with one-step alkaline thermal treatment, and the H 2 purity is greater than 99.9 vol%.