Kinetic investigation on butanol steam reforming over Ru/Al2O3 catalyst

Steam reforming of biomass-derived oxygenates is an attractive technique for the renewable production of hydrogen (H2). In this work, steam reforming of n-butanol - a representative of bio-oxygenates - was studied over commercial 5% Ru/Al2O3 catalyst in a fixed-bed reactor. Kinetics of butanol reforming was investigated between temperatures 623 and 773 K at steam/carbon (S/C) ratio equal to 33.3 mol/mol. The W/FA0 ratio (W: mass of catalyst, FA0: molar flow rate of butanol in feed) was varied between 3.3 and 16.7 g h/mol. At T = 773 K, butanol conversion and H2 yield were 93.4% and 0.61 mol/mol. Evaluation of the kinetic data showed that reaction order with respect to butanol was unity. The activation energy for the investigated reaction was 78 kJ/mol. Finally, a Langmuir-Hinshelwood model that assumed the surface reaction between the adsorbed reactants as rate-determining was used to describe the kinetic data.