NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF A STEAM REFORMER TUBE

FOR STATIONARY FUEL CELL APPLICATIONS

Viorel Ionescua, Timur Chisb

a
Department of Physics and Electronics, Ovidius University, Constanta, 900527, Romania
b
Department of Chemistry and Chemical engineering, Ovidius University, Constanta, 900527, Romania

Abstract

Compact fuel processors based on steam reforming process using natural gas, liquefied
petroleum gas (LPG) and biogas have been developed for over a decade in order to offer the fuel
gas (hydrogen) into the combined heat and power (CHP) fuel cell systems for cogeneration of
electricity and heat. Numerical modelling of a steam reforming reactor described by fully
coupled mass, energy and flow equations has been developed in this paper by using the Finite
Element Method (FEM) based Comsol Multiphysics software version 5.2. Here, a steam
reformer tube model formed by a catalytic bed, heating gas tubes and an insulating jacket was
considered. In this paper, we want to establish the influence of heating tube diameter and
insulating jacket thickness on the heat transferred through catalytic bed and on the mass fractions
of propane and hydrogen consumed and produced, respectively, during the endothermic reaction.