Predicting nickel catalyst deactivation in biogas steam and dry reforming for hydrogen production using machine learning

This study employs Random Forests (RF) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to model the transient behavior of Ni catalyst deactivation during steam and dry reforming of model biogas containing H 2 S, with a focus on hydrogen production. Deactivation, induced by carbon deposition and sulfur poisoning, is a complex and transient phenomenon demanding precise kinetic mechanisms for accurately predicting Ni catalyst behavior in biogas reforming. Black-box machine learning (ML) models are developed, incorporating catalyst properties, biogas composition, and operating conditions. Encompassing both dry and steam reforming, the ML models aim to predict catalyst behavior, expressed in terms of packed bed reactor exit mole fractions (H 2 , CO, CH 4 , and CO 2 ) and conversions (CH 4 and CO 2 ). The ML models are trained and tested across a temperature range of 700–900 C with 0–145 ppm of H 2 S in model biogas (CH 4 /CO 2 ratio varying from 1.0 to 2.0). RF outperforms the ANN across all performance metrics, including overall R 2 and root mean squared error (RMSE). The RF achieves a mean overall R 2 of 0.979, with training and testing RMSE equal to 6.7 × 10 − 3 and 1.47 × 10 − 2 respectively. In contrast, the ANN achieves a mean overall R 2 of 0.939, with training and testing RMSE equal to 2.6 × 10 − 2 and 2.55 × 10 − 2 respectively. Moreover, pre-trained RF models are validated with unseen data of dry reforming of biogas containing 30 ppm of H 2 S (25 data points). It is suggested that 35 % of this unseen experimental data is required to train the RF model for it to predict catalyst deactivation, achieving a validation R sufficiently 2 > 0.9. The mean overall R 2 values attained by the RF fine-tuned on 35 % of the unseen experiment data for both CH 4 and CO 2 conversions, as well as for all mole fraction predictions, are 0.952 and 0.948, respectively.