Steam reforming

• Main Authors: David Davis, Graham Hinton, Craig Foster, Andrew Edward Richardson, Craig Wilkinson, Mikael Carlsson, Mileta Babovic
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 23.02.2022
• Subjects: CHEMISTRY; COMPOUNDS THEREOF; INORGANIC CHEMISTRY; METALLURGY; NON-METALLIC ELEMENTS

A process is described for steam reforming a hydrocarbon feedstock whilst supressing the formation of carbon, comprising passing a mixture of the hydrocarbon feedstock and steam through a catalyst bed comprising a particulate nickel steam reforming catalyst and a structured nickel steam reforming catalyst disposed within a plurality of externally heated tubes in a tubular steam reformer, wherein each tube has an inlet to which the mixture of hydrocarbon and steam is fed, and the steam reforming catalyst at the outlet of the tubes is the structured steam reforming catalyst, wherein the particulate steam reforming catalyst comprises 5 to 30% by weight nickel, expressed as NiO, and has a largest dimension that is 15% of the internal diameter of the plurality or tubes, and the structured steam reforming catalyst comprises nickel dispersed over the surface of a porous metal oxide present as a coating on a non-porous metal or ceramic structure, wherein the nickel content of the metal oxide coating is in the range of 5 to 50% by weight and the thickness of the coating is in the range or 5 to 150 micrometres.