Catalyst design by CFD for heat transfer and reaction in steam reforming

A comparative study was made of the influence on heat transfer performance in the near-wall region, of internal voids in cylindrical particles, in a steam reforming packed bed reactor tube. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to obtain detailed flow and temperature fields in a representative wall segment of the tube. Simulations in which inert packing was heated up showed that particles with no internal voids appeared to perform better than particles with internal voids, in the bed interior. Near the wall, all particles behaved similarly. When heat sinks were included in the particles to represent the thermal effects of chemical reaction, the heat transfer performance of a packing of full cylinders was shown to change markedly, both qualitatively and quantitatively.