A comprehensive CFD simulation of an industrial-scale side-fired steam methane reformer to enhance hydrogen production

Abstract

The present work deals with the CFD simulation of steam methane reforming (SMR) with a view to design and improve the SMR technology. Numerical simulations have been devoted to accurately modeling the primary reformer tube used in major petrochemical industries by employing the kinetic mechanism, standard k-Ɛ turbulence models, and discrete ordinates (DO) radiation model. The developed model has been validated with the available modeling studies on industrial steam methane reforming in the operating condition. Moreover, the effects of some key parameters such as surface heat flux, reformer tube length, reformer tube diameter, steam-to-carbon ratio (S/C), and feed flow rate on the performance of industrial tube reformer have been investigated. Using a suitable sensitivity analysis, the optimal values of these parameters are recommended for the optimal performance of the reformer tube in order to increase hydrogen production in the industrial reformer. Numerical results show that considering the optimal values including surface heat flux of 95 kW·m2, reformer tube length of 11 m, reformer tube diameter of 0.172 m, S/C = 1.6 and feed flow rate of 0.34 kg·s−1 leads to an increase of about 20% in hydrogen production compared to petrochemical industrial data.