3.5. Carbon deposition studies
Fig. 7 shows the TPO profiles of used catalysts. Generally, the
high temperature peaks are assigned to carbon deposited on or
around alumina support while the low temperature peaks are due
to carbon in the vicinity of active metals. In this study, broad peaks
corresponding to carbon oxidation were seen starting to appear at
temperatures higher than 520 ◦C. The high temperature peaks were
only seen for catalysts Ni/b, Pd/b and Ni-Pd/b and were not observed
in any Rh containing catalysts. The low temperature peaks were
either very small or absent in most of the catalysts studied. This
may indicate that the carbon was extensively deposited on the surface
of the support and not much was observed on the metal sites.
It should be emphasized that the Rh containing catalysts with less
carbon deposition also gave higher hydrogen yields and displayed
less extensive deactivation, suggesting that one of the causes of
deactivation is carbon deposition on the surface of support.