Hydrogen production from glycerol by reforming in supercritical water over Ru/Al2O3 catalyst

Supercritical water is a promising medium for the reforming of hydrocarbons and alcohols for the production of hydrogen at high pressures in a short reaction time. Water serves both as a dense solvent as well as a reactant. In this work, hydrogen is produced from glycerol by supercritical water reforming over a Ru/Al2O3 catalyst with low methane and carbon monoxide formation. Experiments were conducted in a tubular fixed-bed flow reactor over a temperature range of 700–800 °C, feed concentrations up to 40 wt% glycerol, all at short reaction time of less than 5 s. Glycerol was completely gasified to hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane along with small amounts of carbon monoxide. At dilute feed concentrations, near-theoretical yield of 7 mol of hydrogen/mol of glycerol was obtained, which decreases with an increase in the feed concentration. Based on a kinetic model for glycerol reforming, an activation energy of 55.9 kJ/mol was observed.