Panagakos G., Kyriakides A., Papadopoulou S., Voutetakis S., 2015, A Computational Investigation of Hydrogen Production from Methane Steam Reactor, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 45, 1033-1038.
Integration of hybrid energy systems towards a sustainable future inherently relies on hydrogen-fueled devices like fuel cells whose relevant importance is justifiably increasing. Methane Steam Reforming (MSR) is currently the predominant choice for industrial and commercial hydrogen production. Permeation of H2 through a highly selective membrane, serves for lower-than-conventional-reactors’ temperature separation from the other components of the products of the MSR and simultaneous Water Gas Shift Reaction (WGSR), taking place on a catalyst layer. In this work we present a computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer investigation of such a tubular setup including an annular reactor, a Pd-Ru membrane and appropriate counter flows for inlet and outlet gases. This axially symmetric two dimensional steady state, multi-physics model aims at the systematic study of different operating conditions such as the reactor’s temperature, and the methane’s feed flow rate aiming at the mathematical optimization of mainly two objective functions: i.e. methane’s conversion and hydrogen’s recovery yield. It is found that methane conversion is favoured by elevated temperatures and lower inlet velocities of the reactant mixture, while the hydrogen recovery yield acquires a clear maximum on its temperature dependence around 743 K and benefits from diminished values of the reactants’ insertion flow-rate.
