Boreskov Institute of Catalysis of the Siberian Branch of Russian ...

THE KINETICS OF METHANOL STEAM REFORMINGR. Tesser, M. Di Serio, E. Santacesaria ( * )University of Naples «Federico II» – Department of Chemistry,Complesso Universitario Monte S. Angelo, Via Cintia 4, I-80126 Naples (Italy)( * ) E-mail: elio.santacesaria@unina.it - Phone: +39 081674027 - Fax: +39 081674026PP-V-15Methanol is nowadays considered as a fundamental building block in the production ofmany chemicals such as, for example, formaldehyde and acetic acid or, alternatively, as alow-cost energy vector like in MTBE and biodiesel productions. Moreover, methanol isregarded as an hydrogen reservoir in fuel cells applications, in which methanol represents anefficient solution for hydrogen transportation- and storage-related problems. With thisapproach is possible to produce high purity hydrogen, compatible with fuel cells technology,through the catalysed steam reforming reaction. The catalytic steam reforming of methanol isbased on the following reaction [1-7]:CH3OH + H2O → CO2 + 3H 2In this work the kinetics of methanol steam reforming (MSR) have been studied inexperimental conditions similar to the ones used in industrial applications and by using acommercial catalyst with a shape of cylindrical pellets. The used catalyst, very active andselective, is a mixture of Cu-Zn-Al oxides and is usually employed, in industry, for lowtemperatureCO water-gas-shift (WGS) reaction:CO + H2O ← ⎯⎯→ ⎯ CO2+ H 2In a first phase of the study, different kinetic models have been tested in the description ofexperimental runs performed in a CSTR Berty-type reactor and reported in our previous work[8,9]. In this way the detrimental effect of water and/or hydrogen concentration on thereaction rate has been established, also in comparison with the results reported in the literatureby other authors [1-7]. With this approach the more reliable kinetic law has been selected forthe description of experimental data and for the subsequent scale-up towards the packed-bedpilot reactor.In a second phase of the research different runs have been performed on a tubular pilotscalepacked bed reactor (Fig. 1) operated in non-isothermal and non-adiabatic conditions.The kinetic law developed for the run in the CSTR reactor runs has then been used for thesimulation of these second kind of continuous experiments, also taking into account for bothmass and heat balance along the reactor and inside the catalytic particles [10]. Effectivenessfactor of the pellets has been evaluated, by rigorous calculation [10], along the reactor axis485