Theoretical evaluation of silica MR performance during MSR reaction by CFD method

This study presents a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model to investigate silica membrane reactor (MR) performance during methanol steam reforming (MSR) for hydrogen production. The proposed CFD model provided the local information of velocity, pressure and component concentration for the driving force analysis. After investigation of mesh indecency of CFD model, the validation of silica MR during MSR reaction was carried out by experimental data and a good agreement between modeling results and experimental data was found. The effects of the some important operating parameters (reaction temperature and pressure) on the performances of silica MR were studied in terms of methanol conversion and hydrogen recovery. The CFD results showed that the silica MR during MSR reaction presents higher performance in term of the methanol conversion with respect to once achieved by traditional reactor (TR) during the MSR reaction. In particular, in the best operating condition, hydrogen production rate in reaction zone shows around 14% enhancement in silica MR with respect to TR.

کلیدواژه ها:

Silica membrane reactor ، Modeling ، CFD method ، MSR reaction