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- Conflict of Interest
- In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.
- Publication history
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Received June 12, 2023
Accepted May 10, 2024
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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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Validation of Eff ectiveness Factor Correlations for Steam Methane Reforming in Ni-Based Washcoat Catalyst Layers Using Commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics Software
Abstract
In this study, the eff ectiveness factor correlations proposed for steam methane reforming (SMR) in Ni-based washcoat catalyst
layers were numerically validated using the commercial computational fl uid dynamics (CFD) software, ANSYS Fluent. The
SMR process in an exemplary microchannel reformer was simulated, once by fully considering the reaction and diff usion
process within the washcoat catalyst layer and again by simplifying the process calculation using the eff ectiveness factor
correlations. It was shown that the proposed eff ectiveness factor correlations could successfully capture the SMR characteristics
in the washcoat catalyst layer, with a discrepancy of approximately 0.1% point in the overall methane conversion
ratio in the validation test, while reducing the calculation time by a factor of 1/5 for the same number of iterations. All these
results clearly demonstrated that accurate and cost-eff ective CFD simulation of the steam reformer operation is possible
using the proposed eff ectiveness factor correlations. Finally, this paper also addressed a possible numerical anomaly in the
Fluent calculation identifi ed during the present simulation.
