Abstract:
Steam methane reforming (SMR) is a dominant technology for hydrogen production.
For the highly energy-efficient operation, robust energy analysis is crucial. In
particular, exergy analysis has received the attention of researchers due to its
advantage over the conventional energy analysis. In this work, an exergy analysis
based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based method was applied to a
monolith microreactor of SMR. Initially, a CFD model of SMR was developed using
literature data. Then, the design and operating conditions of the microreactor were
optimized based on the developed CFD model to achieve higher conversion efficiency
and shorter length. Exergy analysis of the optimized microreactor was performed
using the custom field function (CFF) integrated with the CFD environment. The
optimized catalytic monolith microreactor of SMR achieved higher conversion
efficiency at a smaller consumption of energy, catalyst, and material of construction
than the reactor reported in the literature. The exergy analysis algorithm helped in
evaluating length-wise profiles of all three types of exergy, namely, physical exergy,
chemical exergy, and mixing exergy, in the microreactor.
