Packed bed reactor modeling of the catalytic auto-thermal reforming of synthetic crude glycerol

Modeling and simulation studies of synthetic crude glycerol auto-thermal reforming were performed in a catalytic packed bed reactor over a 5 wt% Ni/CeZrCa catalyst. The numerical model comprised of two-dimensional material and energy balance equations and an in-house developed power law kinetic rate model. The model was validated against experimental data and a close agreement between the predicted and experimentally measured values was obtained with an average absolute deviation of < 9%. Also, it was found that for the set of conditions and reactor dimensions used for this study, the effect of the axial dispersion term on the glycerol conversion was negligible. This effect is expected to be more pronounced at a larger scale and under actual operating conditions and therefore should not be neglected.