H2 from biofuels and carriers: A concerted homo-heterogeneous kinetic model of ethanol partial oxidation and steam reforming on Rh/Al2O3

Investigating bioethanol as a renewable energy source is crucial in the context of H2-based economy. Ethanol partial oxidation and steam reforming on Rh/Al2O3 represent promising processes that have already proved to be highly tangled reacting systems. In this work, a significant step forward has been done towards the development of an engineering tool that can capture all the relevant features of the process; a combined homo-heterogeneous kinetic scheme was developed and validated against experimental data, informative of the catalytic and thermal activation of the C2-alcohol. In particular, a 36-species reduced homogeneous scheme was developed, able to cap -ture observed trends with a limited computational load. On the other side, a macro-kinetic heterogeneous scheme with six molecular reactions (ethanol oxidative dehydrogenation, total oxidation, decomposition, dehydrogenation, steam reforming and acetaldehyde post -reforming) was tuned to accurately describe ethanol/O2 and ethanol/H2O reacting systems.& COPY; 2023 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Investigating bioethanol as a renewable energy source is crucial in the context of H2-based economy. A combined homo-heterogeneous kinetic scheme was developed and validated against experimental data to capture the relevant features of the bioethanol partial oxidation and steam reforming processes. The study developed a 36-species reduced homogeneous scheme and a macro-kinetic heterogeneous scheme with six molecular reactions to accurately describe the reacting systems.