CFD Simulation of Methane Steam Reforming Furnace
Multi-scale and/or multi-disciplinary approach to process-product innovation
CFD & Multiscale Modelling in Chemical Engineering (T3-4P)
Keywords: CFD, Simulation, Steam Reforming Furnace, Excess Air.
Abstract
Excess air in hydrogen furnaces is a major problem in steam reforming plants in oil refineries. It strongly affects production of combustion polluted gases, inefficient temperature distribution on tubular reactors and hydrocarbon conversion of reforming process.
A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the steam reforming furnace is performed in this work. The furnace is modeled using real industrial size including burners, inside ambient of the furnace as well as tubular fixed bed reactors. More than 4 million nodes which were used for finite volume discretization of the furnace structure comprise the generated mesh. The influence of excess air on the burner combustion reactions, flame height and skin temperature of reforming reactors are investigated. Simulation results show that an increase in excess air leads to decrease in production of carbon monoxide in exhaust gases. However, skin temperature of the tubular reactors reduces when more excess air is used. Finally, an efficient range of excess air causes reduction of Co production and an appropriate temperature distribution can be achieved. The results are in a good agreement with experimental data obtained from steam reforming plant of Tehran refinery.
Presented Tuesday 18, 13:30 to 15:00, in session CFD & Mutliscale Modelling in Chemical Engineering (T3-4P).
