Kinetic and modelling study of methane steam reforming over sulfide nickel catalyst on a gamma alumina support

Kinetics and modelling of methane steam reforming over sulfide nickel catalyst on alumina support is studied. Extensive experiments are firstly carried out to study the performance of the steam reforming process and to determine its kinetic data. The results demonstrate that the reforming performance is strongly affected by temperature and ratio of steam to methane. The favourable condition for high hydrogen production, high reforming efficiency and relatively low carbon monoxide concentration is at steam to methane ratio of 3-3.5 and temperature of around 1073 K. Below this temperature value, the methane conversion rate is approximately proportional to the residence time in the studied range. Two-dimensional model of catalytic fixed bed reformer is developed with a system of partial differential equations describing the conservations for mass and energy using kinetic data determined from the current experiment. The modelling results are successfully validated with experimental data.