Insight into the thermodynamic model for reforming of methane over nickel catalyst

Abstract

The reforming of light hydrocarbons to produce synthesis gas, H2 and CO, is an important intermediate for manufacturing valuable basic chemicals and synthesis fuels. In order to understand these reforming processes better, elementary step reaction mechanisms are developed. In the available literature, the surface reaction mechanisms are usually achieved with the help of reaction kinetic parameters without using the thermochemistry of the species referred to kinetic models due to the unavailability of the thermochemistry of the intermediate species involved in the multi-step reaction mechanism. In this work, investigations are made to obtain the thermochemistry of the intermediate species to establish thermodynamic equilibrium in order to develop thermodynamic model for steam reforming of methane over nickel. The thermochemistry of the surface bound species is taken from different sources available in the literature and after that a detailed sensitivity analysis is performed to match the results with experiments. The simulation set up is adapted from the literature experiments given in [1]. The results produced with the one-dimensional tool using the thermodynamic model developed in the present investigation consisting of 21 reversible reactions are compared with the kinetic scheme with 42 irreversible reactions from reference simulation along with their experimental results. Both the models show some major differences in the reaction pathways which provides a useful insight into the key rate determining steps and needs further investigations.