Small-scale production of hydrogen via auto-thermal reforming in an adiabatic packed bed reactor: Parametric study and reactor's optimization through response surface methodology

In this work, a two-dimensional (2-D) heterogeneous reactor model for ATR process is presented. In order to authenticate the developed reactor model outputs, literature results as well as thermodynamic findings produced by employing chemical equilibrium with applications (CEA) software were compared with the model predictions and an excellent agreement was evidenced that corroborates the model's accurate predictive capability. Response surface methodology combined with central composite design was used to investigate the significance of operational parameters on the performance of the ATR process and Parametric optimization was performed to find the optimal operating conditions. Further insights into the ATR process were obtained by studying the effect of temperature, pressure, S/C, oxygen to carbon ratio (O/C) and gas mass flow velocity (G_s) on CH₄ conversion, H₂ yield (wt. % of CH₄) and H₂ purity. It was concluded that 973 K, 1.5 bar, S/C of 3.0, O/C of 0.45 and G_s of 0.15 kg/m²s resulted in CH₄ conversion and H₂ purity up to 97.6% and 71.8%, respectively.