DYNAMIC KINETIC-MODEL OF THE WATER-GAS SHIFT REACTION USING UNSTEADY KINETIC-EXPERIMENTS

Transient kinetic experiments were used to elucidate the reaction mech anism of the water-gas shift reaction on a commercial low-temperature Cu/Zn/Al2O3 catalyst. Concentration programmed experiments were perfor med in a flow differential reactor at atmospheric pressure in a temper ature range of 200-250 degrees C. The full mechanism of water-gas shif t reaction derived in this work was simplified for modelling purposes. The estimation and optimisation of kinetic parameters were made on th e basis of experimental data. The comparison of experimental and simul ated dynamic system responses indicated a good agreement of experiment al and model predictions. It has been found that catalyst activity, an d consequently the transient system behaviour, is significantly influe nced by mutual interactions of gaseous reaction mixture and catalyst s urface.