Rahman Zia Ur, Ahmad Iftikhar, Kano Manabu, Mustafa Jawad
Department of Chemical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), H-12 Islamabad 46000, Pakistan.
Department of Systems Science, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-Ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan.
Entropy (Basel). 2019 Apr 15;21(4):399. doi: 10.3390/e21040399.
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.
蒸汽甲烷重整（SMR）是制氢的主导技术。对于高能效运行而言，强大的能量分析至关重要。特别是，火用分析因其相对于传统能量分析的优势而受到研究人员的关注。在这项工作中，基于计算流体动力学（CFD）方法的火用分析被应用于SMR整体式微反应器。首先，利用文献数据建立了SMR的CFD模型。然后，基于所建立的CFD模型对微反应器的设计和操作条件进行优化，以实现更高的转化效率和更短的长度。使用与CFD环境集成的自定义场函数（CFF）对优化后的微反应器进行火用分析。与文献报道的反应器相比，优化后的SMR催化整体式微反应器在消耗更少能量、催化剂和结构材料的情况下实现了更高的转化效率。火用分析算法有助于评估微反应器中物理火用、化学火用和混合火用这三种火用的长度方向分布。
