Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Applied Mathematical Modelling

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apm

Numerical simulation of methane partial oxidation in the burner and combustion chamber of autothermal reformer
Hadi Amirshaghaghi a, Akbar Zamaniyan b,*, Hadi Ebrahimi b, Mahshid Zarkesh b
a b

Islamic Azad University, Islamshahr Branch, No. 159, 7th Boostan St., Pasdaran Ave. P.O. Box 19585/466 Tehran, Iran Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI), Gas Research Division, Tehran, Iran

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
This study aims to model the methane partial oxidation process in the burner and combustion chamber of autothermal reactor. The numerical simulation based on this model offers a powerful tool that can assist in reactor design and optimization and scale up of the process saving expensive pilot work. The steady-state governing equations were solved using the SIMPLE algorithm and the effect of turbulence on the mean ow eld was accounted for using the RNG ke model. A two-step reaction mechanism was used for the gas combustion with CO as the intermediate species. The reaction rates were modeled using an Eddy-Dissipation Model. In terms of the geometrical model, a 3D model for burner was developed while an axis-symmetric model for the combustion chamber was implemented to reduce the computational costs. The model formulated was validated against a currently operating autothermal reactor and then has been used to investigate different aspects of these reactors. Results show that effect of oxygen to methane ratio is more than that of feed temperature. It is demonstrated that a 60% increase in O2/CH4 ratio causes a 15.4% decrease and 42.7% increase in H2/CO ratio and methane conversion, respectively. In contrast, a 60% increase in feed temperature does not have a signicant effect on the process. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 23 August 2008 Received in revised form 22 October 2009 Accepted 30 October 2009 Available online 6 November 2009 Keywords: Autothermal reforming Partial oxidation Numerical simulation CFD

1. Introduction Synthesis gas is a very interesting intermediate product in the chemical industry used for a variety of important processes such as ammonia and methanol synthesis. Nowadays, increasing efforts are devoted to the development of efcient technologies to exploit the existing resources of natural gas. There are a number of major processes for synthesis gas generation, but in actuality these technologies are points along a spectrum that spans combustion through steam reforming. Combustion is dened as the process of combining oxygen with a hydrocarbon to form stoichiometric quantities of carbon dioxide and water as products. For a methane fuel, oxygen to the carbon molar ratio of 2 provides sufcient oxygen to convert all the carbon and hydrogen in the fuel into carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O), respectively. Partial oxidation (POX) is the process in which sub-stoichiometric amount of oxygen is added to the process, resulting in carbon monoxide and hydrogen products instead. Autothermal reforming (ATR) combines partial oxidation and steam reforming (SR) in a single process. In autothermal reactor, after the feed gas and steam mixture is preheated, it is combusted with an oxidant and passed over a catalyst to bring the steam-methane reforming reaction to equilibrium [1]. Independent parameters that affect the performance of an ATR reactor are: inlet feed temperature, steam to methane ratio, oxygen to methane ratio and pressure.
* Corresponding author. Address: Department of Gas Conversion, Gas Research Division, Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI), Azadi Sports Complex, P.O. Box 14665-1998, Tehran, Iran. Tel.: +98 (21) 44739540/59; fax: +98 (21) 44739779. E-mail address: zamaniyana@ripi.ir (A. Zamaniyan). 0307-904X/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.apm.2009.10.039

H. Amirshaghaghi et al. / Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

2313

Nomenclature A, B g h hi  g keff i, j Jj0 k

M

N P Ri,r R Sh T  u

m0i;r
YP YR

constant parameters large eddy mixing time scale acceleration of gravity (m s2) total enthalpy, J mol1 enthalpy of component i, J mol1 gravity tensor, m s2 effective thermal conductivity, J m1 s index diffusion ux of species j0 index molecular weight number of chemical species pressure (kPa) rate of reaction for component i (kmol kg1 s1) universal gas constant (kJ kmol1 K1) source term in the energy equation temperature (K) mean velocity vector, m s1 stoichiometric coefcient for reactant i in reaction mass fraction of any product species mass fraction of any reactant species

Greek letters density of mixture (kg m3) stoichiometric coefcient for reactant i in reaction  s stress tensor

q m0i;r

Subscripts eff effective op operation

There have been numerous studies on POX and ATR processes, carried out both numerically and experimentally. Gray [2] experimentally studied the effect of reactant initial temperature on nal product composition. Vanpee [3] conducted an experimental study on the methane combustion and highlighted the effect of OH in initiation and stability of POX process. Barbieri et al. [4] suggested a mechanism including 87 reactions, which was in agreement with Vanpees results. Caron et al. [5] investigated effect of high pressures on combustion of fuel rich mixtures and reported the strong effect of high pressures on reducing methane self ignition temperatures. Recently, CFD has been used in the several researches and has been a useful tool for predicting the uids behavior including transport phenomena. Simulation of uid ow in burners is a well-known example of application of the CFD. There are several researches about CFD simulation of the burner in 1D, 2D, and 3D. Most of all are correspond to the specic geometries. For instance, Yapici et al. [6] simulated a two-dimensional axisymmetric combustion chamber using a Fluent CFD code to investigate the effects of air/fuel ratio and swirl velocity on the combustion and entropy generation rate. Another example is simulation of recuperative MILD combustion burners by an axisymmetric model that has been considered in 2D [7] or 3D geometries [8]. Effect of input air ow, an important parameter in a burner is the subject of some researchers that applied the CFD tool (e.g. effect of air distribution on burner performance by LaRose and Hopkins [9] and turbulent air ow in a typical boiler wind box segments by Bhasker [10]). The more specic 3D simulations includes considering of the sensitivity of several major operating variables of Cho et al. [11] on of a large front wall-red furnace, vaporization during pulverized coal combustion on a laboratory-scale single-burner furnace [12], and studies on burner secondary airow [13]. So far there is no research about 3D simulation of autothermal reformer by considering of burner phenomena. To summarize the argument it could been deduced that in previous studies, the effect of various parameters has been investigated, mostly using PSR (Perfectly Stirred Reactors [14]) and using one-dimensional models where hydrodynamic effect were not taken into account, which obviously indicates the demand for a general study including the investigation of complex interaction of turbulence and chemical reactions, where this study intends to ll this gap and accomplish a more realistic understanding of processes inside the reactor. The well known CFD commercial software, FLUENT 6 was used for modeling.

2314

H. Amirshaghaghi et al. / Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

2. Numerical modeling studies 2.1. Assumptions In the aim of simplicity some assumptions were made, including steady-state incompressible ow and axisymmetric ow eld in combustion chamber-burner in 3D geometry. Moreover, in the calculation of turbulence terms, in averaged form equations, boussinesq method was used. 2.2. Computational domain The computational domain covered the entire burner and combustion chamber ow eld from the fuel, air and steam inlets to the catalyst bed (see Fig. 1).Since the ow eld was axisymmetric in combustion chamber, an axisymmetric swirl model was used, but to model the burner a 3D was used because of asymmetric geometry of burner. A total number of 100,000 tetrahedral elements and 300,000 triangular elements were used for simulation of burner and combustion chamber, respectively. Efforts were made to keep the wall parameter y+ in the desired range (3060). A number of meshes were tested to ensure the mesh independence of the numerical solutions. 2.3. Governing equations The mathematical model of processes inside the reactor is constituted of four different parts: swirling turbulent ow, Heat and mass transport by convection, chemical reactions and radiation. Hence, in order to model the problem ve sets of equations should be solved: continuity, momentum, energy (including radiation), species transport and turbulent ow modeling equations (in time averaged form). The conservation equations for mass, momentum, and total enthalpy, may be expressed in a coordinate-free form as:

 0; r qu  qg u  rp r s ; r qu

1 2

Fig. 1. Schematic of autothermal rector.

H. Amirshaghaghi et al. / Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

2315

qh r keff rT r u

  Sh;reaction Sh;radiation : hj0 J j0 sik u

 is mean velocity vector, and hj are total enthalpy and enthalpy of jth In the above equations, q represents mixture density, u  stands for the viscous stress tensor. To take into account the radiation of hot gasses inside the chamber, the P1 species and s model was used 2.4. Turbulence modeling In the current study, the well known RNG kemodel has been implemented to simulate turbulence. The RNG model in FLUENT provides an option to account for the effects of swirl or rotation by modifying the turbulent viscosity appropriately. In comparison with the standard k model, the smaller destruction of e augments e, reducing k and, eventually, the effective viscosity. As a result, in rapidly strained ows, the RNG model yields a lower turbulent viscosity than the standard ke model. Thus, the RNG model is more responsive to the effects of rapid strain and streamlines curvature than the standard ke model, which explains the superior performance of the RNG model for certain classes of ows [15,16]. 2.5. Combustion model Most fuels are fast burning, and the overall rate of reaction is controlled by turbulent mixing. In non-premixed ames, turbulence slowly convects/mixes fuel and oxidizer into the reaction zones where they burn quickly. In such cases, the combustion is said to be mixing-limited, and the complex chemical kinetic rates can be safely neglected. FLUENT provides a turbulence-chemistry interaction model, based on the work of Magnussen and Hjertager [17], called the Eddy-Dissipation Model. According to this model, overall reaction rate is controlled by turbulence mixing rate and the mean reaction rate of fuel is proportional to the inverse of the time scale of the large-scale eddies characterized by the ratio k/e, and to the smallest of the fuel, oxygen or products concentrations. In this model the reaction rate is given by smaller of following two expressions:

! YR ; k m0R;r Mw;k ! e Rp Y p 0 Ri;r mi;r Mw;i ABq : 00 k RN j mj;r M w;j Ri;r m0i;r Mw;i Aq

min

4 5

In the above equations, N represents number of chemical species in the system, m0i;r is stoichiometric coefcient for reactant i in reaction, YP and YR represent the mass fraction of any product species, P and mass fraction of a particular reactant, R, respectively. Besides A and B are empirical constants and equal to 4.0 and 0.5, respectively. Moreover, the methane partial oxidation modeled using a two step reduced mechanism as below:

CH4 1:5O2 ! CO 2H2 O; CO :5O2 ! CO2 :

2.6. Catalyst bed model

6 7

To take into account the reactions inside the catalyst bed (methane reforming and watergas shift), a previously validated 1D code [18,19], was implemented (the codes input included, pressure, temperature and composition of hot gases at the outlet of combustion chamber).

I Steam Reforming : CH4 H2 O $ CO 3H2 ; II Water Gas Shit : CO H2 O $ CO2 H2 ; III Methanation : CH4 2H2 O $ CO2 4H2 :
2.7. Material properties

8 9 10

Since the Eddy-Dissipation Model does not predict intermediate species and dissociation effects and leads to over-prediction of temperature, the specic heat of each species was dened as piecewise-polynomial function of temperature to account for radical and intermediate formation. Besides to consider density variation the Incompressible Ideal gas law implemented. The density of the air-natural-gas mixture is dened with the ideal-gas mixing law:

Pop P RT
i

mi Mi

11

2316

H. Amirshaghaghi et al. / Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

where R is the universal gas constant, mi is the mass fraction of species i, Mi is the molecular weight of species i, and pop is the operating pressure (taken to be atmospheric). For other thermal properties of the mixture such as molecular viscosity, thermal conductivity, diffusivity and absorption coefcient, the values for air at 900 K were used. The thermal conductivity was 25 W/m K for the stainless steel, and 0.1 W/ m K for the ceramic insulation [20]. 2.8. Boundary conditions To complete the modeling procedure we need to set proper boundary conditions for both parts of our model (burner and combustion chamber). (a) Burner: In the current study, mass ow inlet and pressure outlet boundary conditions were set for burner inlet and outlet, respectively. Due to the known mixture composition and temperature of reactants at reactor inlet, the appropriate values were implemented for mass ow rate and temperature of species. (b) Combustion chamber: Again mass ow inlet and pressure outlet boundary conditions were used at the inlet and outlet, respectively. Mass ow rate and temperature of species, also is known from previous part simulation results (burners outlet). Moreover, to consider the presence of swirl generator at combustion chambers inlet, the appropriate tangential velocities were imposed. Considering the steam circulation on the reactors outer wall [1], constant temperature boundary condition was used at reactor walls. Besides to estimate Reynolds stress components and turbulence dissipation and estimated turbulence intensity of 10% and hydraulic diameters were used for both parts. (c) Catalyst bed: After simulation of combustion chamber, the output parameters including pressure, temperature and composition of hot gases are entered to a Visual Basic code to be used in the catalytic bed model as mentioned in the Section 2.6.

3. Solution procedure Numerical solution of the model equations were performed in nite volume method by using CFD commercial code, Fluent 6.0 and SIMPLE algorithm was used for pressurevelocity relationship. A segregated solver with a second-order accurate
Table 1 Characterization of reactor feed. Characteristics of stream Temperature, C Pressure, bar Flow rate, kg/h Composition, mol% CO2 CO H2 CH4 N2 H2O CH3OH C2H6 C3H8 Ar Fuel 670 36 296,083 3.49 1.81 18.37 33.56 1.47 40.77 0.01 0.1 0.05 0.01 Oxidizer 230 37 114,130. 99.8 Steam 395 47.0 23,717.0

0.01 100.0

0.01

Table 2 Comparison of plant data and simulation results of rector outlet (products of xed bed catalytic section). Parameter Reactor outlet temperature, C Reactor outlet pressure, bar Products composition (mol%) H2 CO CO2 N2 CH4 H2O Ar Plant 975 35 40.24 19.16 5.66 1.02 1.27 32.61 0.03 Model 968 35.04 39.95 19.96 6.03 1.02 1.36 31.55 .03 %Error 0.7 0.1 0.7 4.1 6.5 7 3.3

H. Amirshaghaghi et al. / Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

2317

scheme was used to resolve the ow eld. At convergence, the normalized residuals of ow variables were about or less than 106 in all test cases. The monitored axial velocities at two points in the shear layer downstream of the combustion chamber remained unchanged at least for the rst four digits. 4. Case study and model validation In the aim of model validation, autothermal reactor of Zagros Petrochemical Complex of Iran has been selected. Table 1 represents characteristics and operating condition of this reactor. Unfortunately, there is no data available for uid ow and

Fig. 2. ATR burner: (a) mesh conguration of the burner; (b) path lines in the burner, colored by temperature (values in the legend are temperature with unit of K). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 3. Combustion chamber: (a) conguration (white and black networks represent the small meshes); (b) generated meshes of half top part of the chamber. In vicinity of the inlet the meshes are ner than that of outlet (almost is colored by black).

2318

H. Amirshaghaghi et al. / Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

properties inside the reactor, so temperature and mixture composition of products at the outlet of catalyst bed was used in the purpose of comparison. The output (pressure, temperature and composition) was used for comparison. 5. Result and discussion 5.1. Numerical model assessment Table 2 summarizes the results, obtained by developed model and presents a comparison between prediction and plant data. Results for temperature and pressure show excellent agreement with measured data (below 1%), but less good agreement for species mole fractions (within about 6%). This is thought to be due to the neglect of Partial Oxidation detailed mechanism and intermediate species. Fig. 2 shows the ATR burner, simulated in this study that includes (a) mesh conguration and (b) pathlines (colored by temperature). Combustion chamber is presented in Fig. 3 with the specied meshes. Contours of stream function, velocity (for the case of Table 1) are shown in Figs. 4 and 5. These gures show the presence of a central recirculation zone and a corner recirculation zone. The recirculation zones are created by the expansion of the swirling inlet ow in the reactor. By increasing the amount of tangential velocity at inlet (by adjusting angle of swirl vanes of

Fig. 4. Stream function contours at combustion chamber (central recirculation zone is clearly visible). The unit of legend values is m/s.

Fig. 5. Contours of mole fraction of O2 at combustion chamber.

H. Amirshaghaghi et al. / Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

2319

burner), the recirculation zones are also increased. As a result, the hot burnt gases are better mixed with the initial mixture, stabilizing the ame and speeding up the reactions. There is a clear striation of the ow with very low oxygen concentrations in the center part of the combustion chamber and relatively high concentrations near the walls (Fig. 5). The low oxygen region in the center has, at the same time, high velocities and high temperatures. These effects are shown in Figs. 6 and 7. The temperature contours of the ATR reactor (at the operating condition of Table 1), is shown in Fig. 7. Again the presence of hot spot is observed to develop near the centerline in initial part of the combustion chamber. Moving toward the walls and along the ow direction, the temperature drops. From these trends, it can be estimated that the methane oxidation reaction mainly occurs in the front part (and near the centerline) of the combustion chamber, which will release a large amount of heat. The endothermic reactions, such as the methane steam reforming reaction (SR), will absorb the generated heat and the overall process will proceed automatically. 5.2. Products H2/CO The ratio of hydrogen to carbon monoxide is a key factor in ATR reforming process. In general for ATR, a ratio within about 2.5 is desirable. But regarding to desired application, Hydrogen or Syngas production, this value may change. In our case the maximum Syngas production is of interest, so the optimizations will be made to reduce this ratio. As mentioned above, independent parameters that affect the performance of an ATR reactor are inlet feed temperature and steam to methane ratio. Fig. 8a shows that H2/CO ratio decreases with increasing O2/CH4 ratio. The reason for this is obvious. This can be explained by the fact that, by increasing the amount of Oxygen at feed, a greater amount of methane would have the

Fig. 6. Velocity contours at combustion chamber. The unit of legend values is m/s.

Fig. 7. Temperature contours at combustion chamber. The unit of legend values is K.

2320

H. Amirshaghaghi et al. / Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

Fig. 8. H2/CO molar ratio of products versus (a) O2/CH4feed (average feed temperature is 810 K) and (b) feed average temperature (O2/CH4 molar ratio at feed .51).

chance to participate in reaction with oxygen and partial oxidation (Eq. (12)) tend toward more production of CO and CO2, consequently. The benecial effects of increasing inlet feed temperature on maximum CO yield are shown in Fig. 8b. From this gure, it is inferred that, the CO yield would increase slightly due to higher inlet temperatures. On the other hand, higher inlet temperatures may also require specialized construction materials to insure reformer life, so increasing feed O2/CH4 ratio, seems to be more favorable. It is shown that by increasing of O2/CH4, 60% (0.50.8), the H2/CO is decreased about 15.4 %. And an increase of 42.7 % is obtained by increasing of feed temperature about 60% (Fig. 8b). 5.3. Methane conversion Several parameters affect methane conversion, including feedstock temperature and O2/CH4 ratio, Pressure and reactor size. In this investigation the inuence of feedstock temperature and O2/CH4 ratio has been studied, assuming a known geometry and inlet streams pressure.

H. Amirshaghaghi et al. / Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

2321

Fig. 9a shows the effect of feed O2/CH4, on methane conversion percent, for an ATR reactor. It indicates that, by increasing the feed O2/CH4 ratio, the methane conversion rate would increase signicantly. This is due to fact that, by increasing the amount of oxygen to fuel, a higher combustion of methane would be occurred and less unreacted methane will remain. Another parameter which inuences methane conversion is, feedstock temperature. In Fig. 9b methane conversion variation under operation of the reactors at feed O2/CH4 ratio equal to.53 as a function of feed average temperature are presented. The higher the preheat temperature, the higher is the nal combustion temperature [21]. The result in which high methane conversion percent is obtained by preheating of the feedstock is due to the fact that less heat is provided by way of the combustion reaction of methane at the expense of reducing the production of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Due to lower oxygen consumption and less combustion of methane, higher conversion ratio of methane to synthesis gas and fewer products of carbon dioxide and water vapor are obtained. According to the Figs. 8 and 9, effect of oxygen to methane ratio is more than that of feed temperature. It is demonstrated that a 60% increase in O2/CH4 ratio (0.50.8) creates a 15.4% decrease and 42.7% increase in H2/CO ratio (Fig. 8) and methane conversion, respectively. However, for the same value of increase, 60%, in feed temperature (600960 K), there are only a 0.46% decrease in H2/CO and a 0.92% increase in methane conversion. On the other hand, variation of feed temperature is not effective in this process.

Fig. 9. Methane conversion percent versus (a) O2/CH4 feed (average feed temperature is 810 K) and (b) feed average temperature (O2/CH4 molar ratio at feed .51).

2322

H. Amirshaghaghi et al. / Applied Mathematical Modelling 34 (2010) 23122322

6. Conclusions Non-catalytic partial oxidation of methane has been studied computationally. The model formulated was validated against the plant data and then has been used to investigate different aspects of these reactors. From the simulation data presented in this paper, a reactor optimization strategy can be deduced; operate at the highest possible O2/CH4 ratio and inlet feed temperature while minimizing heat loss and reactor pressure to achieve the maximum CO production rate. According to the results, effect of oxygen to methane ratio was more than that of feed temperature. It was demonstrated that a 60% increase in O2/CH4 ratio (0.50.8) creates a 15.4% decrease and 42.7% increase in H2/CO ratio and methane conversion, respectively. However, for the same value of increase, 60%, in feed temperature (600960 K), there are only a 0.46% decrease in H2/CO and a 0.92% increase in methane conversion. It means that changing of feed temperature is not signicant in comparison to the variation of O2/CH4 ratio of the feed. References
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] M.A. Pena, J.P. Gomez, J.L.G. Fierro, New catalytic routes for syngas and hydrogen, Production Appl. Catal. A 144 (1996) 757. B.F. Gray, Unied theory of explosions, cool ames, and two-stage ignitions Part I, Trans. Faraday Soc. 65 (1969) 16031613. M. Vanpee, On the cool ames of methane, Combust. Sci. Technol. 93 (1993) 363374. G. Barbieri, F.P. Di Maio, P.G. Lignola, M.L. Loiacono, Modeling methane cool ames and ignitions, Combust. Sci. Technol. 106 (1995) 83102. M. Caron, M. Goethals, G.D. Smeft, et al, Pressure dependence of the auto-ignition temperature of methane air mixtures, J. Hazard. Mater. 65 (1999) 233244. H. Yapici, N. Kayatas, B. Albayrak, G. Basturk, Numerical calculation of local entropy generation in a methaneair burner, Energy Convers. Manage. 46 (2005) 18851919. E. Malfa, M. Venturino, V. Tota, Mathematical modeling of ameless combustion for Micro-CHP system development, in: 25th Event of the Italian Section of the Combustion Institute, Rome, June 35, 2002. C. Galletti, A. Parente, L. Tognotti, Numerical and experimental investigation of a mild combustion burner, Combust. Flame 151 (2007) 649664. J.A. LaRose, M.W. Hopkins, Numerical ow modeling of power plant windboxes, in: Power-Gen Americas95, December 57, Anaheim, California, USA, 1995. C. Bhasker, Simulation of air ow in the typical windbox segments, Adv. Eng. Software 33 (2002) 793804. S. Cho, A. Seltzer, J. Ma, Sensitivity analysis of furnace performance calculations, AIAA/ASME Joint Thermophys. Heat Transfer Conf. 2 (1998) 273283. J. Sui, M. Xu, J. Qiu, et al, Numerical simulation of ash vaporization during pulverized coal combustion in the laboratory-scale single-burner furnace, Energy Fuels 19 (2005) 15361541. A. Purimetla, J. Cui, CFD studies on burner secondary airow, Appl. Math. Model. 33 (2009) 11261140. P. Glarborg, R.J. Kee, J.F. Grcar, J.A. Miller, PSR: A Fortran Program for Modeling Well-stirred Reactors, Technical Report SAND86-8209, Sandia National Laboratories, 1986. W.P. Jones, turbulence modeling and numerical solution methods for variable density and combusting ows, in: P.A. Libby, F.A. Williams (Eds.), Turbulent Reacting Flows, Academic Press, London, UK, 1994. A.P. Morse, Axisymmetric Turbulent Shear Flows with and without Swirl, PhD. Thesis, London University, 1977. Fluent, Incorporated: FLUENT 6 UDF Manual, Lebanon (NH), Fluent Inc., 2001. A. Zamaniyan, H. Ebrahimi, J.S. Soltan Mohammadzadeh, A unied model for top red methane steam reformers using three dimensional zonal analysis, Chem. Eng. Process. 47 (2008) 946956. J.S. Soltan Mohammadzadeh, A. Zamaniyan, Simulation of terraced wall methane steam reforming reactors, Iran J. Sci. Technol. 26 (2002) 249260. B.E. Poling, J.M. Prauznitz, J.P. OConnell, The Properties of Gases and Liquids, fth ed., McGraw Hill, New York, 2001. B. Lemke, An Experimental and Computational Investigation of Methane/air Partial Oxidation, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Illinois, Illinois, USA, 2006.