Numerical Simulation of Transport Characteristics of Porous Metal Fiber Sintered Felts Used in Microreactor for Hydrogen Energy

The porous metal fiber sintered felt (PMFSF), a new catalyst support, was successfully used to construct a methanol steam reforming microreactor for hydrogen production. To study the transport characteristics of PMFSFs, a three-dimensional model with the cubic pore cell structure for PMFSFs was established. Using computational fluid dynamics fluent software, the velocity and pressure distribution when the fluid through the PMFSFs was investigated by changing the porosity of PMFSFs and inlet velocity of the fluid. In addition, fluid temperature distribution was analyzed under different inlet velocities by setting the temperature of fluid and wall. The result shows that the PMFSFs greatly enhance the transport characteristics because of its three-dimensional network structure and microchannel structure, it will become an ideal candidate for catalyst support material.