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Comparison of Exergy Losses for Reformers Involved in Hydrogen and Synthesis Gas Production
Author(s) -
Behroozsarand Alireza,
Wood David A.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
chemical engineering and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.403
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1521-4125
pISSN - 0930-7516
DOI - 10.1002/ceat.201900078
Subject(s) - exergy , hydrogen production , methane reformer , steam reforming , process engineering , methane , hydrogen , waste management , environmental science , chemistry , engineering , organic chemistry
A user‐coded, customized methodology for exergy balance and analysis of chemical and thermal processes is developed with the Aspen HYSYS process simulator, to assess and explain exergy loss in steam methane reforming. Exergy analysis is presented for four configurations of primary and secondary reformers to produce synthesis gas: (1) an autothermal reformer (ATR) alone, (2) a top‐fired reformer (TFR) alone, (3) ATR‐TFR configured in parallel, and (4) ATR‐TFR configured in series. The same states and feed conditions, i.e., mass flow rate, temperature, pressure, and feed gas composition, are applied to the four reformer configurations considered, with the single ATR showing the lowest exergy loss of about 0.43 W kg −1 of dry productivity.