Recent advances in structured catalysts preparation and use in water-gas shift reaction

The water-gas shift reaction plays a key role in hydrogen production processes from fossil sources and renewable biomass feedstock and can be considered as the first purification process of syngas. The water gas shift process is normally carried out in two adiabatic stages, of high and low temperature with an intersystem cooling. The two stages use two different catalytic systems, which present some critical issues, thus making extremely attractive the designing and implementing of new configurations. Innovative and highly active catalytic formulations along with more efficient reactor systems could provide the basis for the design of a single-stage process, resulting in a noticeable process intensification. In the last decades, much attention has been paid to the use of structured catalysts, which have numerous advantages, related to both fluid dynamics and heat transfer phenomena. Numerous papers have been published in which the competitive performances of structured catalysts have been shown with respect to conventional catalytic systems. In this brief review, we provide an overview of the most recent developments in the preparation of structured catalysts and use in the water gas shift reaction.