Progress of Cryogenics and Isotopes Separation

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The National Conference with international participation on New Cryogenic and Isotope Technologies for Energy and Environment - EnergEn 2018 is organized by the National Research-Development Institute for Cryogenic and Isotopic Technologies - ICSI Rm. Valcea with the scientific participation of the University of Pitesti and the University of Craiova and will be held at Baile Govora, in 2018.
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MATHEMATICAL MODELLING OF STEAM METHANE REFORMING IN A MEMBRANE REACTOR - PRELIMINARY RESULTS


Elena Carcadea1 , Mihai Varlam1, Ioan Stefanescu1, Vasile Tanislav1, Horia Ene2, Bogdan Nicolescu3

1National Research and Development Institute for Cryogenics and Isotopic Technologies - ICIT Rm. Valcea, code 240050 - Rm. Valcea, Uzinei 4, CP7 Raureni, Valcea, Romania, phone: 0040 250  736979, fax: 0040 250 732746 e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
2Romanian Academy of Sciences, Mathematical Institute, Bucharest, Romania, e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
3Pitesti University Faculty of Mathematics, Romania, e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it


ABSTRACT

Steam methane reforming is one of the important reactions for production of hydrogen. It accounts for roughly about 48 % of hydrogen produced globally. It is considered that the development of a membrane-based separation process can open up the possibility of increasing the conversion of the reforming process. In this paper a mathematical modeling of a two-dimensional, pseudo-homogeneous and stationary membrane reactor for methane steam reforming was developed in order to obtain some preliminary results regarding the methane conversion. Sievert's law was used to describe the mechanism of hydrogen permeation across the membrane and a CFD code (COMSOL Multiphysics) was applied to analyze the steam methane reforming.
The study is intended to give us an insight regarding the interaction between the flow and chemical reaction that is taking place inside the membrane reactor.

KEYWORDS: methane reforming, membrane reactor, multiphysics simulation.