A schematic of the experimental set-up used to conduct steam reforming of the fuel is shown in Fig. 1. A quartz reactor tube was used to minimize wall effects, and confirmed through experiment that coking on the inner walls of the quartz tube was negligible. Quartz wool was used to support the catalyst on either side. The temperature of the pre-heater and the reactor were maintained using single-zone tube furnaces controlled by temperature controllers. A K-type thermocouple was placed at the center of the catalyst bed to record and control its temperature. The line carrying the effluent stream was insulated to avoid condensation. The products from the reactor were sent to a glass condenser to separate condensable components such as water and other organic pecies formed or unconverted. The gaseous products were then
withdrawn by an online gas chromatograph using He carrier and equipped with a pulsed discharge ionization detector
(PDID) and a flame photometric detector (FPD). A known volumetric flow of Ar was also simultaneously fed into the reactor using a mass flow controller (Alicat Scientific) to enable quantitative analysis of the reaction products. Mole fractions of H2, Ar, CO, CO2, CH4 and other light hydrocarbons were obtained using PDID while FPD was used to obtain composition of sulfur products.