Hydrocarbon steam reforming in spatially segregated microchannel reactors

2 Hydrocarbon steam reforming in spatially segregated microchannel reactors 

Apart from coupling the exothermic and endothermic reactions in the same volume, these reactions can be physically decoupled to run in different volumes which are separated by a solid medium allowing conductive heat exchange between the reactions. This configuration can be realized in microchannel 

Based on the simplifications summarized earlier, 3D modeling of the multichaimel reactor block can be simplified to 2D modeling of the unit cell which is composed of half of the exothermic and endothermic channels involving the catalytic wash-coats and the thermally conductive wall. Validity of this simplification is checked by solving the 3D model equations 

Catalytic washcoat phase Equation of continuity 3Vxb dVyb 3v  

Karakaya and Avci [25], Reproduced with permission of Elsevier. Subscript h in the equations defines the quantities in channel b. 

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