Study on kinetics of hydrogen reduction of MoO2

•The reduction mechanisms of MoO2 under both isothermal and non-isothermal conditions were studied.•A new model was developed and applied to describe the reduction kinetics of MoO2.•The rate controlling step and the corresponding activation energy for hydrogen reduction of MoO2 were obtained.

The reduction mechanisms of MoO2 under both isothermal and non-isothermal conditions have been investigated in this work. The results showed that the product Mo was kept the same platelet shape as the initial MoO2. The reduction kinetics of MoO2 was analyzed by using a new model, which was in an explicit form and incorporated different variables, such as time, temperature, hydrogen content, etc. It was found that the model predicted curves agreed well with the experimental data. The results indicated that hydrogen reduction of MoO2 was controlled by the chemical reaction at the reaction interface, and the corresponding activation energy was 90.6–92.5 kJ/mol.