CFD study on hydrogen production during sorption-enhanced glycerol steam reforming

This study presents a 2D-axisymmetric computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model to investigate the performance of sorption-enhanced during glycerol steam reforming (GSR) for hydrogen production. The proposed CFD model provided the local information of velocity, pressure and component concentration for the driving force analysis. After investigation of mesh independency of CFD model, the validation of sorption-enhanced fixed bed reactor during GSR reaction was carried out by experimental data and a good agreement between modeling results and experimental data was achieved. In the present model, a tubular reactor with length of 100 mm was considered, in which the Co-Ni/Al2O3 as catalyst and CaO as CO2 adsorbent were filled in reaction zone. Hence, the effects of the some important operating parameters (reaction temperature and reaction pressure) on the performances of sorption-enhanced fixed bed reactor were studied in terms of glycerol conversion and hydrogen yield. The CFD results showed that the suggested system during GSR reaction presents higher performance with respect to once obtained in the common fixed bed reactor (without CO2 capturing). In particular, in the best operating condition, hydrogen production rate in reaction zone show an enhancement around 12% in the sorption-enhanced fixed bed reactor over once achieved in the common fixed bed reactor.

Keywords:

Hydrogen production , CFD , Modeling , Glycerol steam reforming