Numerical study of catalytic steam reforming of aviation kerosene at supercritical pressures

A new two-dimensional numerical model is proposed for supercritical catalytic steam reforming of Chinese aviation kerosene No. 3 (RP-3) in order to suppress the coke formation during regenerative cooling of scramjet engines. A well-established wall catalytic steam reforming mechanism is used together with the newly proposed coke formation models to account for the coke formation during wall catalytic steam reforming reaction of RP-3. This wall catalytic steam reforming and coking model is coupled with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes to provide information of the flow field variables in the mini-channel reactor. The model is validated against experimental results. The effects of water content, pressure and inlet flow velocity on the wall catalytic reforming of RP-3, particularly on the coke formation, are then studied and analyzed. The simulation results show that higher water content and higher pressure can effectively suppress coke formation and increase the conversion of RP-3. The increase of inlet flow velocity, however, can reduce coke deposits but results in low conversion of RP-3.