Background:
Steam methane reforming takes place in many parallel catalyst-filled tubes made of austenitic stainless steels at high temperature. Failure of these tubes is relatively common.
Task:
Discuss the mechanisms by which these reformer tubes and their associated architecture may be particularly prone to failure. Suggest examples of instrumentation that could be employed to potentially detect when such a failure may occur.
Describe how tube materials are chosen in an attempt to mitigate against failure mechanisms.
Describe what the process consequences would be in the event of a tube failure during operation.
Please use sources that are accessible to students. Such as sources from knovel or research gate or sciencedirect or other websites
citation style: Vancouver
