Simulation and performance improvement of an industrial steam methane reformer: depreciation and ceramic coating effects

In this work, Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) is applied to compare the performance of an industrial reformer furnace in four cases. The first and tenth years of operation are two cases with different emissivity factors and fuel components. The results are validated with industrial data and with other CFD simulation typical plants reported in the SMR literature. The results show that a 10% increase in fuel consumption in the tenth year cannot compensate for all temperature drop in skin tubes, and there is still a 14 K temperature drop, leading to a 5% decrease in hydrogen production in tubes. This is due to the different fuel components of the tenth year compared to the first year. To examine the effect of fuel change more closely, the third case is defined with the fuel components of the tenth year and the emissivity factor of the first year. The comparison of this case with others shows that fuel components have a high effect on system performance. The major reason for efficiency reduction between the first and tenth years correlates to a 50% decline in the wall surface emissivity factor. Finally, in the fourth case, applying a ceramic coating with a high emissivity factor is considered via the CFD model for the reformer in the tenth year. This change leads to an increase of about 19 K in tube temperature in the tenth year, which is 3 K more than that in the first year. It can be concluded that the ceramic coating application in the wall of the refractory of the reformer can reduce 14% fuel consumption and enhance hydrogen production.