Modeling of steam reforming of methane in a reforming tube using MATLAB (۲.D) and CFD (۳.D)

Due to the pollution caused by the use of fossil fuels and non-renewable sources of energy, the use of clean and renewable fuels such as hydrogen gas is recommended. One of the most efficient processes for hydrogen gas production is the reforming process. The use of methane as a cheap greenhouse gas is one of the main sources for obtaining hydrogen as the primary feed of the process along with reforming agents such as water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Modeling of this reforming process is necessary to analyze and optimize the reactor parameters. Therefore, instead of changing the industrial unit, which takes a lot of time and cost, applying the desired changes in the model and after that optimizing the operating conditions, can apply on an industrial scale reformer. Among all the governing equations for the process, the kinetic equation is more important due to manual input into the CFD software, which is the main reason for errors and convergent problems. In this research, firstly a kinetic model used in the reforming process and the effect of temperature, and pressure is investigated and the results showed the Langmuir-Hinshelwood kinetics models for the nickel catalyst have the best performance. Also, the contour plots of chemical components and temperature inside the reforming tubes can be obtained using the CFD and MATLAB programming that is inaccessible using experimental tests.

کلیدواژه ها:

CFD ، Compact reactor ، Steam methane reforming