CFD simulation of an industrial steam methane reformer: Effect of burner fuel distribution on hydrogen production

•3D CFD simulation of side-fired steam methane reformer was performed.•The numerical simulation was verified with domestic petrochemical plant data.•The effect of burner feed distribution on hydrogen production was studied. Simulation of the steam methane reformer serves as a launching pad to investigate the optimal amount of hydrogen production. In this study, a 3D-CFD simulation is implemented to model transport phenomena for a turbulent fluid flow with chemical reactions within the reformer. Accordingly, the realizable k-ɛ turbulence model and discrete ordinates (DO) radiation model have been employed to simulate the kinetic mechanism of the SMR process and hydrogen/methane combustion. In addition, the REV-scale approach is considered to model the flow in the porous catalyst bed. Numerical results show that 3D-CFD simulation can accurately model such complex flows in comparison to 2D simulation. In the following, 3D numerical simulations have been performed to investigate the effect of fuel distribution between burners on the amount of heat provided, which affects the amount of hydrogen production and the tube wall temperature. Results indicate that the burner feed flow without purge gas and vent gas streams has the highest efficiency in hydrogen production and leads to a ca. 10% increase in hydrogen production compared to industrial case. Although feeding the burner with purge gas and without vent gas increases hydrogen production by about 7% compared to industrial data, it may be a more suitable option due to lower natural gas consumption and economic savings.