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.