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Conflict of Interest: In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Publication history: Received December 6, 2011
Accepted March 7, 2012

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Computational fluid dynamics modeling of hydrogen production in an autothermal reactor: Effect of different thermal conditions

Sayed Reza Shabanian Masoud Rahimi^† Amin Amiri¹ Shahram Sharifnia² Ammar Abdulaziz Alsairafi³

CFD Research Center, Chemical Engineering Department, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran ¹Department of Chemical Engineering, Kermanshah University of Technology, Kermanshah, Iran ²Catalyst Research Center, Chemical Engineering Department, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran ³Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University, Kuwait

Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering, November 2012, 29(11), 1531-1540(10), 10.1007/s11814-012-0030-3

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Abstract

A numerical model was developed and validated to simulate and improve the reforming efficiency of methane to syngas (CO+H2) in an autothermal reactor. This work was undertaken in a 0.8 cm diameter and 30 cm length quartz tubular reactor. The exhaust gas from combustion at the bottom of reactor was passed over a Ru/γ-Al2O3 catalyst bed. The Eddy Dissipation Concept (EDC) model for turbulence-chemistry interaction in combination with a modified standard k-ε model for turbulence and a reaction mechanism with 23 species and 39 elementary reactions were considered in the combustion model. The pre-exponential factors and activation energy values for the catalyst (Ru) were obtained by using the experimental results. The percentage of difference between the predicted and measured mole fractions of the major species in the exhaust gas from combustion and catalyst bed zones was less than 5.02% and 7.73%, respectively. In addition, the results showed that the reforming efficiency, based on hydrogen yield, was increased with increase in catalyst bed’s thermal conductivity. Moreover, an enhancement of 4.34% in the reforming efficiency was obtained with increase in the catalyst bed wall heat flux from 0.5 to 2.0 kW/m2.

Keywords

CFD Combustion Hydrogen Production Reforming Efficiency Syngas

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