OP-II-3

OP-II-24MODELING OF A CATALYTIC PLATE REACTOR PRODUCINGHYDROGEN FOR FUEL PROCESSOR SYSTEMSKırçın R.M., Karakaya M., Avcı A.K., Aksoylu A.E., Önsan Z.I.Department of Chemical Engineering, Bogazici University, Bebek 34342,Istanbul, Turkey, onsan@boun.edu.trThe need for careful temperature control and energy integration as well as thecost of valuable metal catalysts and elimination of pore diffusion effects hascompelled research in the direction of process intensification through design ofstructured reactors and use of alternative catalysts [1]. The catalytic plate reactor(CPR) constitutes a good example for structured reactors by which conventionalpacked-bed reactors can be sized down due to intensification of heat and masstransfer [2]. The CPR itself is a cascade of closely spaced plates coated with catalyston both faces. If catalyst coatings on the two faces of the plate are different,significant heat transfer intensification can be achieved by running an endothermicreaction on one face and an exothermic reaction on the other face of the plate forsupplying the energy required by the endothermic reaction [3-4].The aim of this work was mathematical modeling and steady-state as well asdynamic simulation of a catalytic plate reactor (CPR) in which hydrogen is producedby a reaction pair, namely, endothermic ethanol steam reforming coupled withexothermic methane total oxidation. The two-dimensional heterogeneous model usedincluded conservation of momentum, mass and energy to describe reactorperformance in steady-state operation as a function of operational and dimensionalparameters such as feed composition on different sides of the plate including waterto-hydrocarbonand oxygen-to-hydrocarbon ratios, plate material and wall thickness.Further, the start-up behavior of the reactor was also analyzed by dynamicsimulations to follow spatial and temporal evolutions of transients. The kineticexpressions related to rates of methane catalytic total oxidation and ethanol steamreforming were taken from the literature [5-6]. The coupled, two-dimensional steadystate and transient model equations were solved using the finite element methodthrough the COMSOL Multiphysics CFD package.Simulations using stoichiometric feed ratios of reactants and standard materialsof construction resulted in small transverse and axial temperature gradients, smoothtemperature profiles, no hot spot formation and realistic reactor performance in terms144