A new insight into the kinetics of dibenzyltoluene hydrogenation over ruthenium catalyst for hydrogen storage

The storage and transportation of gas hydrogen in a large scale is the bottleneck of hydrogen economy at present, and using liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) may be a hopefully competitive technique for hydrogen storage. This paper aims at a deep understanding of the hydrogenation kinetics of dibenzyltoluene (DBT) as the LOHC using Ru/Al₂O₃ as the hydrogenation catalyst. The original data for establishing the kinetic model of the hydrogenation of DBT was collected by analyzing the effects of reaction temperature, pressure, catalyst dosage and process parameters on the mass transfer reaction process. The results show that the initial apparent reaction kinetics was a first-order reaction. The main reaction resistance was the internal diffusion process and reaction resistance on the surface of catalyst solid particles, and could be mainly contributed by the internal diffusion in the catalyst pores. This has important guiding significance for reaction optimization and catalyst design in industrial production.