Simulation Research on Conversion of Natural Gas to Hydrogen under Super Adiabatic Rich Combustion

Interest in fuel cells in recent years has promoted the development of hydrogen sources. Methane is an optimal fuel for hydrogen production due to its rich resource and its high ratio of hydrogen to carbon. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) combined with detailed chemical kinetics was employed to model the super adiabatic combustion of a premixed gas of methane/air in this new style reactor with alumina spherical particles inside. A two-dimensional numerical model of a spiral countercurrent "Swiss roll" was developed including P-l radiation model and a methane oxidation mechanism with 17 species and 58 elemental reactions. Various equivalence ratios (1.5, 2 and 2.5) at the flow rate of 120 L/min were studied. The numerical results show good agreement with the experimental data. It is confirmed that the new type of reactor can achieve super-adiabatic rich combustion. Generated hydrogen can be obtained up to a mole fraction of about 22%. The results also show that the combination of CFD with detailed chemical kinetics gives good performance for modeling the combustion of methane/air in porous media.