On the modeling of steam methane reforming

Modeling and simulations of steam methane reforming (SMR) process to produce hydrogen and/or syngas are presented in this article. The reduced computational time with high model validity is the main concern in this study. A volume based reaction model is used, instead of surface based model, with careful estimation of mixture's physical properties. The developed model is validated against the reported experimental data and model accuracy as high as 99.75% is achieved. The model is further used to study the effect of different operating parameters on the steam and methane conversion. General behaviors of the reaction are obtained and discussed. The results showed that increasing the conversion thermodynamic limits with the decrease of the pressure results in a need for long reformers so as to achieve the associated fuel reforming thermodynamics limit. It is also shown that not only increasing the steam to methane molar ratio is favorable for higher methane conversion but the way the ratio is changed also matters to a considerable extent.