Investigation of the kinetics of reduction of nickel tungstate by hydrogen

In the present work, the kinetics of reduction of nickel tungstate, NiWO₄, by hydrogen was investigated by a thermogravimetric method in the temperature range 891 to 1141 K. The experiments were conducted under both isothermal and nonisothermal conditions. The products were examined by X-ray diffraction analysis. The results indicate that the reduction reaction proceeds in two steps; first, reduction of NiWO₄ to nickel as well as WO₂ and then WO₂ to tungsten. From the isothermal experiments, the activation energies of the two reaction steps were calculated to be 95.3 ± 4.9 and 80.8 ± 6.4 kJ · mol⁻¹, respectively. The activation energy value obtained from nonisothermal experiments for the first step is in agreement with the isothermal experiments. The values are compared with the activation energies reported in other literature for the individual oxides. Formerly with Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden