Design of heat exchanger of the steam reforming of ethanol using computational fluid dynamics

Author

Andre Marvin Abanes Calapatia, De La Salle University, ManilaFollow

Date of Publication

4-23-2024

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering

Subject Categories

Engineering | Heat Transfer, Combustion | Mechanical Engineering

College

Gokongwei College of Engineering

Department/Unit

Mechanical Engineering

Honor/Award

Nomination for most outstanding thesis

Thesis Advisor

Aristotle T. Ubando

Defense Panel Chair

Ivan Henderson Gue

Defense Panel Member

Laurence A. Gan Lim

Robby Manrique

Abstract/Summary

Steam reforming stands out as one of the most cost-effective and efficient techniques for hydrogen generation. However, a significant challenge lies in effectively supplying heat to sustain the reactions within the reactor. Among various reactors employed for hydrogen production, Swiss-roll reactors have demonstrated remarkable ability in maintaining the required heat for these reactions. Additionally, enhancing the overall sustainability of hydrogen production has led to growing interest in utilizing waste heat recovery for heat supply. This study introduced a novel design of a Swiss-roll reactor with dual channels, which basically functions as a heat exchanger between the flue gas and ethanol feed to sustain steam reforming reactions. Ethanol is chosen as the feedstock due to its favorable properties for environmentally friendly hydrogen production. A Taguchi design of experiment (DoE) was used to screen-out the least significant factor, and a Latin hypercube sampling DoE was subsequently implemented to improve the uniformity in the design space for capturing the non-linearity of factor effects and achieve optimization. The gas hourly space velocity, steam-to-ethanol ratio, inlet fluegas temperature, and the fluegas flowrate were the control factors. Gaussian process modeling showed exceptional accuracy in predicting the performance of the Swiss-roll reactor, and its conjunctive use with desirability functions showed the pareto optimal H₂ yield and heat recovery rate achievable with the current Swiss-roll reactor design is 4.99 mol H₂/mol_eth and 75.8%, respectively. The novel Swiss-roll reactor was shown to be competitive with other reactors in literature, improving the thermal efficiency over previous Swiss-roll reactor designs by 23.1%.

Abstract Format

html

Language

English

Format

Electronic

Keywords

Heat exchangers; Computational fluid dynamics

Recommended Citation

Calapatia, A. A. (2024). Design of heat exchanger of the steam reforming of ethanol using computational fluid dynamics. Retrieved from https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_mecheng/25

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Embargo Period

4-22-2027