Abstract This study suggests the possibility of substituting rare earths containing catalysts in ethanol steam reforming by means of sustainability assessment. Four Ni-catalysts are assessed; two of the Ni-catalysts are rare earths containing catalysts Ni/Al2O3-CeO2 and Ni/La2O3 while the other two are non-rare earths containing catalysts Ni/Al2O3 and Ni/ZnO. The sustainability assessment tool used covers environmental, health and safety and economic indicators in conjunction with a linear scale transformation (Max) normalization technique and an analytical hierarchy method to evaluate the sustainability performance of the catalysts. The sustainability assessment results obtained demonstrated that Ni/Al2O3 is the best performing catalysts in terms of the overall sustainability of the ethanol steam reforming reaction. The rare earths containing catalyst supports, i.e. cerium and lanthanum oxides can be successfully substituted with aluminum oxide catalyst support whilst still maintaining the overall sustainability performance of the reaction.

中文翻译：

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稀土催化剂在乙醇蒸汽重整中的替代潜力

摘要 本研究通过可持续性评估提出了在乙醇蒸汽重整中替代含稀土催化剂的可能性。评估了四种镍催化剂；两种Ni催化剂是含稀土的催化剂Ni/Al2O3-CeO2和Ni/La2O3，而另外两种是不含稀土的催化剂Ni/Al2O3和Ni/ZnO。所使用的可持续性评估工具涵盖环境、健康和安全以及经济指标，并结合线性标度转换 (Max) 归一化技术和层次分析法来评估催化剂的可持续性性能。获得的可持续性评估结果表明，就乙醇蒸汽重整反应的整体可持续性而言，Ni/Al2O3 是性能最好的催化剂。