Hydrogenation of naphthalene using NiMo/Al₂O₃-SiO₂(x) catalysts: Kinetic study

Two NiMo/Al₂O₃-SiO₂ (x) catalysts with different content of SiO₂in the support (0 and 10 wt %) were evaluated in the hydrogenation of naphthalene. The reaction products (tetralin and decalines) were analyzed to establish a simplified reaction scheme. After that, a kinetic study using Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) type equations was carried out. Firstly, L-H equations that present a best fit with the experimental data were obtained. Then, kinetic parameters (apparent constants of reaction rate and adsorption) were estimated. For it, the Powell's minimization was used. Results show that catalyst with silica reaches a higher activity. This is due to its low value of E_A compared with the displayed by catalyst without silica, which this one related to the difficulty to transform the naphthalene into products.