Catalysts for water-gas shift processing of coal-derived syngases

Although the gasification of coal is an efficient means of producing syngas, the carbon content of coal is such that gasification produces significantly higher ratios of carbon oxides to hydrogen than those obtained by the steam reforming of natural gas. The CO:H2 ratio can be adjusted, and more hydrogen produced, by the subsequent application of the water–gas shift (WGS) reaction. This article presents a review of technologies associated with the catalytic WGS reaction in a fixed‐bed reactor that might be incorporated into a coal gasification‐based system for H2 production with CO2 capture. The main output from this review is the identification of key project areas requiring further research. The performance of existing, commercially available catalysts—designed for use in natural gas reforming processes—with coal‐derived syngases is an important aspect of developing technologies for coal‐based H2 production. This article presents an experimental assessment of the performance of selected commercially available WGS catalysts, two high‐temperature catalysts (HT01 and HT02) and a sour shift catalyst (SS01), with such syngases. For the three commercial catalysts investigated in this study, CO reaction order is found to be in a range of 0.75–1. The effect of changes in H2O concentration over HT01 is insignificant, whereas H2O reaction orders determined using HT02 and SS01 are found to be significantly positive even at high H2O:C ratios. The CO conversion rate is significantly reduced by increasing CO2 concentration, whereas increasing H2 concentration also causes a slight reduction in CO conversion rate for the three commercial catalysts investigated. Copyright © 2010 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.