The production of hydrogen from reforming of carbohydrates has gained prominence following important pioneering studies by the Dumesic group. The production of H₂:CO mixture from the renewable resources such as biomass has important advantages for the manufacture of petrochemicals and fuel cell technology from agricultural feedstock. Indeed, since the co-produced CO₂ may be consumed by biomass growth, the closed loop cycle offers reduced global greenhouse gas effects.
In this work, we evaluate the activity of Al₂O₃-supported 15Co, 15Ni, and 10Ni-5Co catalysts for this reaction. Specifically, the physicochemical properties of the catalyst determined from H₂ chemisorption, NH₃ and CO₂ TPD are strongly correlated with the glycerol reforming activity. Significantly, these properties are readily predicted from the solid-state kinetics attributes of the catalyst during temperature-programmed calcination at heating rates of 5, 15, 30 K min^-1. Analysis of non-isothermal calcination kinetic data revealed that the general n^th order Avrami-Erofeev model is an excellent description of the reaction. Even so, the model with n = 2 yielded E_A of 26 kJ mol^-1 for Ni/Al₂O₃, 39 kJ mol^-1 for Co/Al₂O₃ and 28 kJ mol^-1 for Co-Ni/Al₂O₃ which is symptomatic of a thermal-diffusion controlled reaction. H₂-TPR profiles also showed that the major peaks were at 653, 673 and 753 K for the Ni, Ni-Co and Co catalysts respectively. Interestingly, the Arrhenius parameter estimates, calcination and reduction peaks for these catalysts showed that the intrinsic physicochemical property of the bimetallic catalyst is the sum of the metal composition-average of the same property for the monometallic oxide.