Numerical investigation of methane steam reforming in the packed bed installed with the fin-metal foam

Methane steam reforming via packed bed reactors currently is the primary method for industrial hydrogen produce worldwide. Optimizing the structure of packed bed reactors is an effective approach to enhance the hydrogen yield. This study introduces an innovative structure, the fin-metal foam, combined into a packed bed reactor. A numerical investigation was conducted by the new coupling simulation way, which consists of the equivalent medium model, the Darcy extended Forchheimer flow model and the local thermal non-equilibrium model. A conventional reactor, a reactor installed with a metal foam and a reactor installed with the fin-metal foam were compared. It was found that the fin-metal foam structure improves the performance of flow, heat transfer and hydrogen production. By comparing with the conventional reactor, the fin-metal foam structure reduces the energy dissipation by 35.13 %, increases the fluid temperature by 23 K and improves the overall heat transfer coefficient by 28.59 %. The hydrogen mass flow per catalyst mass per energy dissipation was employed to evaluate the comprehensive hydrogen production performance. The fin-metal foam structure leads to a notable improvement of 113.36 %. These findings suggest a promising way for improving the industrial hydrogen produce, with benefits including reduced energy consumption and catalyst usage.