CFD modeling of a industrial-scale steam methane reforming furnace

- Computational fluid dynamics modeling of the combustion chamber.
- Computational fluid dynamics modeling of the reforming tubes.
- Computational fluid dynamics modeling of steam methane reforming furnace.
- Model calibration and comparison with industrial plant data.

Hydrogen is a required key material for petroleum refineries that convert crude oil into products with higher economic value and is often produced by the steam methane reforming (SMR) process, which synthesizes hydrogen and carbon oxides from methane and superheated steam in the presence of a nickel-based catalyst network in a steam methane reformer. To investigate methods for improving profits for a reformer while avoiding costly on-site parametric studies, a high-fidelity model of a steam methane reformer can be investigated. Motivated by this, the present work focuses on developing a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of an industrial-scale steam methane reformer that consists of 336 reforming reactors, 96 burners and 8 flue gas tunnels. The motivation for choosing the modeling strategies used in the industrial-scale steam methane reformer CFD model is discussed and is based on expected transport phenomena and chemical reactions within the reformer. Specifically, the finite rate/eddy dissipation turbulence-chemistry interaction model, global kinetic models of hydrogen/methane combustion, global kinetic model of the SMR process and standard k-∊ turbulence model with the ANSYS Fluent enhanced wall treatment function are used to simulate the formation and consumption rates of all chemical components of the system. In addition, an empirical correlation for estimating the radiative properties of a homogeneous gas mixture, Kirchhoff's law, Lambert Beer's law and the discrete ordinate method are employed to simulate radiative heat transfer in the furnace side of an industrial-scale steam methane reformer. Moreover, the modeling strategies of the reforming tubes developed in our previous work are adopted to model 336 reforming tubes in the reformer. Subsequently, the boundary conditions (i.e., the reforming tube feed, burner feed and the energy leakage through the combustion chamber refractory wall) of the industrial-scale reformer CFD model are derived based on typical plant data. The simulation results produced by the industrial-scale reformer CFD model are shown to be in agreement with typical plant data reported in the SMR literature, with the simulation data generated by an industrial-scale reforming tube CFD model and with the simulation data generated by a reforming Gibbs reactor model, which validates the chosen modeling strategies and allows the CFD data to be considered to represent actual plant data with sufficient accuracy for use in industrial operating parameter studies.