In-situ catalytic hydrogen production from crude oil over Fe-based bimetallic catalysts

In-situ H 2 production technology from crude oil offers broad application prospects for clean production in low-permeability and high-water oil reservoirs. Nevertheless, its large-scale application is limited by low H 2 production efficiency. To address these challenges, water-soluble composite catalysts of Fe-Ni, Fe-Co and Fe-Zn were adopted in this study for the conversion of crude oil into H 2 via in-situ catalytic gasification. Compared with Fe-Co and Fe-Zn catalysts, the Fe-Ni catalyst showed the best performance. The Fe-Ni catalyst reduced the initial thermal decomposition temperature of crude oil by 30 °C, increased the mass loss rate in the LTO stage by 4.64% and effectively lowered the apparent activation energy of crude oil oxidative pyrolysis. Gas product analysis indicated that Fe-Ni and Fe-Co catalysts increased the syngas yield by 4.08 wt% and 1.75 wt%, along with an increase in H 2 yield of 30.00 mL/g and 18.49 mL/g, respectively. In addition, the Fe-Ni catalyst improved oxygen utilization efficiency by 4%. Mechanism analysis confirmed the synergistic catalysis between air and the catalyst reduces thermal decomposition temperature, promotes the cleavage of C–C and C–H bonds in crude oil macromolecules and accelerates gasification to facilitate H 2 generation. This study confirms the excellent performance of Fe-Ni, Fe-Co and Fe-Zn catalysts for in-situ H 2 production from crude oil under an air atmosphere, and proposes an efficient in-situ catalytic H 2 production method suitable for low-permeability and high-water oil reservoirs.