Kinetic study of glycerol steam reforming catalyzed by a Ni-promoted metallurgical residue

The kinetics of the glycerol steam reforming reaction catalyzed by a nickel-promoted metallurgical residue was studied in a fixed-bed reactor at atmospheric pressure. The temperature was varied between 480 degrees C and 580 degrees C. The experimental reaction rates were correlated via different heterogeneous kinetic models based on LangmuirHinshelwood-Hougen-Watson mechanisms that consider single- or dual-site adsorption of the reactants. The mechanism that provided the most mathematically accurate and thermodynamically consistent results is initiated by dissociative adsorption of glycerol, which cause the breaking of two C-C bonds in the glycerol molecule upon adsorption. This model claims that the dehydrogenation of an adsorbed glycerol intermediate is the ratedetermining step of the global reaction. A macroscopic analysis of the glycerol to gas consumption rates also validated the activation energies identified by the successful heterogeneous model by fitting the experimental data to a straightforward power law model. The activation energy was found to be 66.1 kJ.mol- 1 with a partial order with respect to glycerol of 0.63.

Automated summary

The study investigated the kinetics of glycerol steam reforming reaction catalyzed by a nickel-promoted metallurgical residue in a fixed-bed reactor at atmospheric pressure. The most accurate and thermodynamically consistent mechanism involved the dissociative adsorption of glycerol, which led to the breaking of C-C bonds and dehydrogenation of glycerol as the rate-determining step. The activation energy was found to be 66.1 kJ.mol-1 with a partial order with respect to glycerol of 0.63, as validated by a macroscopic analysis of glycerol to gas consumption rates.