Crude glycerol excess as a by-product of biodiesel industry has given rise to the need to valorize glycerol, e.g. its conversion to hydrogen by steam reforming. While many studies have been made towards catalyst development and their performance, catalyst selectivity and stability continue to be issues of further investigation. In this work, ruthenium doped nickel-alumina-ceria catalyst has been studied. The catalyst was prepared by wet impregnation method. Characterization was done with BET surface area, SEM, temperature programmed reduction, temperature programmed oxidation and pulse hydrogen chemisorption techniques. Performance test experiments were carried out in a packed bed reactor with aqueous glycerol feed, in water to glycerol mole ratio 12:1, at temperatures 550 °C to 800 °C, weight hourly space velocity of 10 h^− 1 and atmospheric pressure. It was found that 10Ni-1Ru/Al₂O₃/5CeO₂ catalyst showed superior catalytic performance and stability, compared to 10Ni/Al₂O₃ and 10Ni/Al₂O₃/5CeO₂. Hydrogen selectivity of 88.6% was obtained versus a thermodynamic value of 95.9% at 650 °C. The catalyst was also stable for 24 h on stream. From the kinetic study, overall activation energy was found to be 70.82 kJ/mol and order of reaction with respect to glycerol and steam were 0.31 and 0.52 respectively.