This study presents a three-dimensional pore-scale numerical simulation of steam methane reforming (SMR) and water–gas shift (WGS) reactions within a porous channel. A Voronoi-structured nickel–alumina (Ni/Al 2 O 3 ) porous catalyst is considered. The main novelty lies in the development of a three-dimensional multi-relaxation-time/regularized lattice Boltzmann (MRT/RLB) model for simulating reactive flow in an integrated catalytic porous structure, implemented within the open source PALABOS platform, which makes it possible to effectively simulate a complex and computationally expensive 3D problem. The system is modeled with volumetric reactions driven by an internal heating power applied directly to the porous metal foam. The effects of key parameters, including porosity and pore density of the porous media, steam-to-carbon ratio (S/C), inlet flow velocity, and total heating power supplied to porous solid, on hydrogen production performance are systematically investigated. The results show that a porosity of 0.7 and a pore density of 40 pores per inch (PPI) provide the best performing geometrical parameters within the investigated thermo-reactive range, yielding a hydrogen concentration of 14.15 mol/m 3 at the outlet. Lower inlet velocities enhance residence time and conversion, with an optimal value of 0.1 m/s producing 0.067 × 10 - 3 g/s of hydrogen. Furthermore, intensifying the internal heating power significantly boosted reaction rates, increasing hydrogen production up to 19.43 mol/m 3 . The above results offer valuable guidance for improvement of reactor geometry design and operational parameters aimed at hydrogen production enhancement in porous catalytic systems.
Tahmasbi et al. (Fri,) studied this question.