Simulation of steam reforming of biogas in an industrial reformer for hydrogen production

The paper aims to investigate the steam reforming of biogas in an industrial-scale reformer for hydrogen production. A non-isothermal one dimensional reactor model has been constituted by using mass, momentum and energy balances. The model equations have been solved using MATLAB software. The developed model has been validated with the available modeling studies on industrial steam reforming of methane as well as with the those on lab-scale steam reforming of biogas. It demonstrates excellent agreement with them. Effect of change in biogas compositions on the performance of industrial steam reformer has been investigated in terms of methane conversion, yields of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, product gas compositions, reactor temperature and total pressure. For this, compositions of biogas (CH4/CO2 = 40/60 to 80/20), S/C ratio, reformer feed temperature and heat flux have been varied. Preferable feed conditions to the reformer are total molar feed rate of 21 kmol/h, steam to methane ratio of 4.0, temperature of 973 K and pressure of 25 bar. Under these conditions, industrial reformer fed with biogas, provides methane conversion (93.08-85.65%) and hydrogen yield (1.02-2.28), that are close to thermodynamic equilibrium condition. (c) 2021 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the steam reforming of biogas for hydrogen production in an industrial-scale reformer. The developed non-isothermal reactor model shows excellent agreement with previous modeling studies and lab-scale experiments. Changes in biogas compositions have been studied to optimize the performance of the industrial steam reformer, with preferable feed conditions identified for methane conversion and hydrogen yield close to thermodynamic equilibrium conditions.