Performance assessment of hydrogen production by steam methane reforming in Ni metal-foam-filled reactor: Transport phenomena modelling and permeability measurements.

Hydrogen production for low greenhouse gas emissions attracts great interest of several research group worldwide. Even though current scientific research has made a lot of progress on the hydrogen field, several technological locks related to heat and mass transfer limitations in steam reforming processes remain to be overcome. This study focuses on numerical analysis of steam methane reforming reaction combined with experimental measurements of Nickel-based Metal Foam (Ni-MF) permeability coefficients. Two configurations of micro-planar-cell reactor were investigated. The first one consists of a 2D plane micro reactor in which catalyst is impregnated in the central axis. The second micro reactor is equipped by an inert metal foam. Numerical resolution of transport equations was realized with a homemade FORTRAN-based code to explore the thermal and mass transfer during the SMR process. To model the presence of Ni-MF into the reactor and for better assessment of the Ni-MF contribution, permeability coefficients (Darcy and Forchheimer coefficients) required as input data for the numerical analysis were measured experimentally. Comparison has shown that the insertion of Ni-MF achieves a considerable enhancement in terms of heat transfer, methane conversion and hydrogen yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]