Modeling of catalyst poisoning during hydrogen production via methane steam and dry reforming

A key aspect of biogas reforming is the frequent presence of hydrogen sulfide in such gases, and its negative poisoning impact on reactor performance. In this work, we present a modeling framework which is used to simulate the performance of a biogas-reforming reactor undergoing deactivation. A simplified heterogeneous reactor model is proposed to simulate deactivation results found within the literature, with validation of the reactor model completed against literature modeling data. Good agreement was found between literature data and simulated results calculated here. This agreement was found in spite of having tested reference data against a proposed quasi-uniform poisoning condition to assess the suitability of assuming shell-progressive poisoning to be insignificant. Further, this agreement was achieved by assuming an order of deactivation of n = 1, in contrast with the more common assumption of n = 3 for steam methane reforming. Discussion and comparison between these results and other studies noted in literature indicate, however, that the proposed order of deactivation is not necessarily implausible. Lastly, an industrial parametric case study using this model is presented, and thoughts regarding its use in analysis of real reactors is given.