Digital simulation of industrial steam reformers for natural gas using heterogeneous models

A model is developed for industrial natural gas steam reformers with top‐fired and side‐fired furnance design. The one‐dimensional heterogeneous model for catalyst tubes takes into account the intra‐particle diffusion resistances. Two approximations are used for the computation of the effective diffusivities via the Stefan‐Maxwell equations. The two‐point boundary value differential equations for the catalyst pellets are solved by a novel efficient and modified orthogonal collocation technique. The performance of the model has been checked in the case of two industrial reformers used in the ammonia and methanol industries in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.