A dynamic two phase flow model for a pilot scale sodium borohydride hydrogen generation reactor

• A dynamic two phase model was successfully implemented.
• Only 30% of the catalyst was used during the NaBH4 hydrolysis reaction.
• The position of the catalyst foam in the solution had a great impact on performance.
• The perforated plastic support played an important role on the solution recirculation.
• Two phase flow must be adopted in order to reach a better representation of the real system.

A two-dimensional, non-isothermal and dynamic model was developed to describe a sodium borohydride/hydrogen reactor for stationary use. All relevant transport phenomena were treated in detail and the kinetic model developed previously by the authors was introduced into the algorithm. In this paper the reactive solution was modelled as a two phase flow; with this approach the impact of the hydrogen production on the solution stirring could be observed and quantified.Results showed that not all ruthenium deposited on the nickel foam was used efficiently as catalyst. In fact, most of the reaction occurred in the surface of the catalyst foam and around 70% of the deposited catalyst was not used. The influence of the catalyst foam position in the solution and the design of the perforated plastic support were analysed in order to find the optimum experimental conditions. It was also demonstrated the importance of the two phase flow approach for a correct simulation of the solution stirring and heat transfer.