Kinetics of hydrogen production by the autothermal reforming of crude glycerol over modified nickel supported catalyst

In this work, the kinetics of autothermal reforming (ATR) of synthetic crude glycerol (CG) to produce renewable hydrogen was studied over nickel catalyst supported on promoted cerium-zirconium carrier (5% Ni/CeZrCa) in a temperature range of 500-650 °C, steam-to-carbon (S/C) range of 1.6-3.6, oxygen-to-carbon (O/C) range of 0.05-0.2 and weight hourly space range of 0-158.2 gcat min/mol C. Synthetic crude glycerol composed of pure glycerol, methanol, soap, free fatty acids and ashes was used in this work. A kinetic region free of heat and mass transfer limitations was established by varying catalyst particle size and inlet flow rate. The stability of the catalyst was also established in an extended period run for 15 h time on stream experiment. The estimated activation energy of 93.7 kJ/mol with reaction orders of 1, 0.5 and 2 for synthetic crude glycerol, steam and oxygen, respectively, were obtained for this reaction. The developed power law model was −rA=2.09×1011e(−937008.314T)PA1PB0.5PC2 with 95% predictability.