Application of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) for Modelling of Reforming

Process
Pranshu Dixit EChE17037
Rajeev Kumar EChE17039

Chemical Engineering Department

Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, India

With the present situation of sustainability interest about the energy sector, hydrogen is foreseen by many
as the fuel of the future and as an alternative of fossil fuels because of its ability to reduce anthropogenic
emission of greenhouse gases and has a very high calorific value, which can be easily used to fulfill the
increasing energy requirements .Biogas reforming is one of the most appealing and promising method for
hydrogen production. However one drawback of biogas thermo-catalytic reforming is its varying
composition from source to source, carbon deposition on catalyst and also reforming is very energy
intensive process. This paper aims to establish a novel and comprehensive methodology for identifying
the optimal thermodynamic operating conditions and to demonstrate the modeling and optimization by
ANN for prediction. The required data for training of ANN is obtained by modeling and simulation of
reforming process in ASPEN. The operating data are calculated by changing input parameters such as
feed temperature, reformer pressure, and steam to carbon ratio and carbon dioxide to methane ratio in
feed stream. After fixing the cardinal structure of network, optimization studies were carried out to find
optimum configuration. With changing of effective parameters, the model predicts temperature, pressure
and mole fraction of hydrogen and carbon monoxide with ≈ 98.8% accuracy

Keywords: Biogas, reforming, syngas, optimization, multi-criteria, Artificial Neural Network ,Feed
Forward