Siliceous mesoporous SBA-15 has been proposed as a new effective structural promoter to prepare highly effective SiO₂-modified Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃ catalysts for hydrogen production. It was demonstrated that the SBA-15 modified catalyst exhibited superior performance in terms of methanol conversion and suppressed formation of CO during steam reforming of methanol. It was suggested that the intrinsic nature of SBA-15 should favor the generation of modified catalyst with much larger metallic copper surface area and improve copper dispersion. In addition, it was shown by in situ XRD that a considerable increase of the microstrain of Cu nanocrystals could be achieved in the catalysts modified by SBA-15, which correlates well with the enhanced CH₃OH conversion as observed on the corresponding samples.

Key words: steam reforming of methanol, mesoporous SBA-15, Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃ catalyst, microstrain, in situ XRD