Direct Hydrogen Production from Extra-Heavy Crude Oil under Supercritical Water Conditions Using a Catalytic (Ni-Co/Al₂O₃) Upgrading Process

The generation of hydrogen from unconventional oil is expected to increase significantly during the next decade. It is commonly known that hydrogen is an environmentally friendly alternative fuel, and its production would partially cover the gap in energy market requirements. However, developing new cheap catalysts for its production from crude oil is still a challenging area in the field of petroleum and the petrochemical industry. This study presents a new approach to synthesizing and applying promising catalysts based on Ni, Co, and Ni-Co alloys that are supported by aluminum oxide Al2O3 in the production of hydrogen from extra-heavy crude oil in the Tahe Oil Field (China), in the presence of supercritical water (SCW). The obtained catalysts were characterized via scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area analysis, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and, X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD). The obtained XRD data showed 3.22% of Co2+ in the Co/Al2O4 catalyst, 10.89% of Ni2+ in the Ni/Al2O4 catalyst, and 1.51% of Co2+ and 2.42% of Ni2+ in the Ni-CoAl2O3 bimetallic catalyst. The BET measurements of the obtained catalysts showed a surface area ranging from 3.04 to 162 m2/g, an average particle size ranging from 0.037 to 0.944 µm, and micropore volumes ranging from 0.000377 to 0.004882 cm3/g. The thermal, SCW, and catalytic upgrading processes of the studied samples were conducted in a discontinuous autoclave reactor for 2 h at a temperature of 420 °C. The obtained results revealed that thermal upgrading yielded 1.059 mol.% of H2, and SCW led to 6.132 mol.% of H2; meanwhile, the presence of Ni-CoAl2O3 provided the maximal rate of hydrogen generation with 11.783 mol.%. Moreover, Ni-CoAl2O3 and NiAl2O3 catalysts have been found to possess good affinity and selectivity toward H2 (11.783 mol.%) and methane CH4 (40.541 mol.%). According to our results, the presence of SCW increases the yield of upgraded oil (from 34.68 wt.% to 58.83 wt.%) while decreasing the amount of coke (from 51.02 wt.% to 33.64 wt.%) due to the significant amount of hydrogen generation in the reaction zone, which reduces free-radical recombination, and thus, improves oil recovery. Moreover, the combination of SCW and the synthetized catalysts resulted in a significant decrease in asphaltene content in the upgraded oil, from 28% to 2%, as a result of the good redistribution of hydrogen over carbons (H/C) during the upgrading processes, where it increased from 1.39 to 1.41 in the presence of SCW and reached 1.63 in the presence of the Ni-CoAl2O3 catalyst. According to the XRD results of the transformed form of catalysts (CoNi3S4), after thermal processing, heteroatom removal from extra-heavy crude oil via oxidative and adsorptive desulfurization processes is promoted. These findings contribute to the expanding body of knowledge on hydrogen production from in situ unconventional oil upgrading