The stability and deactivation of ICCU-DRM using Fe2O3/Al2O3 and CaCO3 combined functional materials (https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.iecr.9b05783). As shown in the following figure, the production of H2 and CO is clearly reduced after the 1st cycle. It is noted that only 5 cycles of ICCU were reported in this work. This might be limited by the detection methods used in this work, where a GC was used and each sample took 20 mins to analyse.
The authors did XRD, FTIR and SEM analysis on the fresh sample and the samples from cycle 1 and cycle 5. As shown below, CaCO3 peaks could be clearly observed, suggesting the increase of crystal phases (confirmed by the SEM results), which is related to the sintering of the sorbent. The intensity related to the crystal faces (012) of Fe2O3 and Al2O3 is reduced after a few cycles, suggesting the loss of oxygen storage capacity, which reduces the reforming activity. The authors also did the oxidation of materials after ICCU, and CO2 was clearly obtained, demonstrating the presence of coke deposition, which should also be responsible for the deactivation of materials.
