Conceptual modeling of a reactor bed of a nickel-copper bi-metallic catalyst for dry reforming of methane

Abstract

Dry-Reforming-of-Methane (DRM) presents an attractive process for the conversion of CO2 and CH4 to syngas. Catalyst deactivation by carbon formation is a major challenge hindering DRM scale-up. A novel bimetallic Ni/Cu catalyst developed previously in our lab demonstrated significant carbon resistance and superior stability compared to conventional Ni catalysts. This paper presents the kinetics of the bimetallic catalyst. A unique approach utilizing carbon formation rates obtained from Density-Function-Theory (DFT) results is presented to scale monometallic Ni catalyst kinetics. The developed kinetics model incorporated within a 1-D pseudohomogeneous reactor-bed model was validated with thermodynamics and experimental results. The experimental results were obtained at 923-K temperature, flowrates (30 mL/min-250 mL/min), catalyst-loading (<10 mg), and bed-dilution (<500 mg). Additionally, the catalysts were characterized to identify crystal phase, surface area, pore-volume, and composition using XRD, BET-BJH, and ICP analysis, respectively. The developed kinetics model and the associated characterization dataset could be used for future scalability/reproducibility assessments.