Author(s)

M. Abou-Ellail, R. Amano & K. Beshay

Abstract

The present paper is concerned with the numerical computations of flow, heat transfer and chemical reactions in two-dimensional cylindrical gas reformers. The reformer is overlaid with a two-dimensional grid of nodes having 300 in the radial direction and 1000 nodes in the axial direction. The governing equations for momentum, mass continuity, energy and species mass fractions are solved numerically using finite-volume procedures. The solutions are considered converged when the errors in the finite-volume equations are less than 0.1 percent. The reformer is fed with gasified gas coming from the gasifier at temperatures ranging from 1000 K to 1300 K. Moreover, the reformer is also supplied with hot air at temperatures ranging from 700 K to 800 K. The reformer diameter is 350 mm and is 4574 mm high. The reformed gases contain air, methane, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. The volume flow rates of the gasified gas range between 60 and 80 Nm3/s. However, the hot air volume flow rates range between 20 and 30 Nm3/s. The obtained results for the gas reformer performance at different operating conditions are compared with the limited available experimental data for similar reformers. The agreement is acceptable with some discrepancies in the compositions of the gases exiting the reformer. This is because some of the geometries and boundary conditions of the tested gas reformers are missing. Keywords: numerical simulation, gas reformer, chemical reactions, species mole fraction.

Keywords

numerical simulation, gas reformer, chemical reactions, species mole fraction