Bimetallic Palladium Catalysts for Methane Combustion in Gas Turbines

Abstract: Catalytic combustion is a promising combustion technology for gas turbines, which results in ultra low emission levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and unburned hydrocarbons (UHC). Due to the low temperature achieved in catalytic combustion almost no thermal NOx is formed. This thesis is concentrated on the first stage in a catalytic combustion chamber, i.e. the ignition catalyst. The catalyst used for this application is often a supported palladium based catalyst due to its excellent activity for methane combustion. However, this type of catalyst has a serious drawback; the methane conversion decreases severely with time during operation. The unstable activity will result in increasing difficulties to ignite the fuel. The parameters that govern the poor stability and other features of the palladium catalysts are discussed in the thesis.The objective of the work is to improve the catalytic performance of supported palladium catalysts, with focus on stabilising the methane conversion. A large number of different bimetallic palladium catalysts have been evaluated, where the influence of co-metals, molar ratio and support material is addressed. Results from the activity tests of methane combustion showed that it is possible to stabilise the activity by adding certain co-metals into the palladium catalyst. An extensive characterisation study has been carried out on the various bimetallic catalysts in order to gain a better understanding of how their morphology and physicochemical properties determine the various patterns of combustion behaviour.The environment inside a gas turbine combustor is very harsh for a catalyst. Since the stability of the catalyst is of great importance for ignition catalysts, it is essential to evaluate the risk of deactivation. In this work special emphasis has been given to thermal deactivation, water inhibition and sulphur poisoning. It was found that a bimetallic Pd Pt catalyst is significantly more tolerant to the various deactivation processes investigated than the monometallic palladium catalyst.Finally, the influence of pressure on the catalytic performance has been investigated. The catalysts were assessed at more realistic conditions for gas turbines, in a high-pressure test facility with 100 kW fuel power.