Impact of kinetic models in the prediction accuracy of an industrial steam methane reforming unit

Abstract

• Comparison of kinetic models and their influence on the reformer performance. • The different kinetic models converge fast to equilibrium. • The kinetics have little influence on the reformer's performance. • Simplest kinetic models present advantages compared to traditional ones. Catalyzed chemical reactions inside tubular reactors play a key role in steam methane reforming process, as they define the temperature and composition profiles of the reformer and, consequently, its efficiency. Although the kinetic modeling of reforming reactions has already been widely discussed, studies that carry out the comparison between kinetic reform models are still scarce. In this context, this work aims to evaluate the influence of different kinetics on the stationary behavior of industrial reformer. The kinetic models of Singh and Saraf (1979), Numaguchi and Kikuchi (1988), Xu and Froment (1989a), and Hou and Hughes (2001) were analyzed and compared with each other. All models describe the reformer satisfactorily with relative deviations around 3.5% compared to experimental and literature data. The results show that the simplest kinetic models present advantages compared to traditional models, such as Xu and Froment (1989a), which is widely used without any prior analysis.