Process Intensification of Hydrogen Production by Catalytic Steam Methane Reforming: Performance Analysis of Multilayer Perceptron-Artificial Neural Networks and Nonlinear Response Surface Techniques

Uncertainty about how process factors affect output might lead to waste of resources in laboratory experiments. To address this constraint, a data-driven method might be used to describe the non-linear connection between process parameters and desired output. A Multi-Layer Perceptron-Artificial Neural Network (MLP-ANN) and non-linear response surface method are used to predict hydrogen generation by catalytic steam methane reforming. The impact of training methods (scaled conjugate and gradient descent), hidden layer variation, artificial neuron variation, and activation functions were studied in 80 MLP-ANN combinations (hyperbolic tangent function and sigmoid function). The performance of MLP-ANN models was affected by the training techniques, activation functions, layer count, and number of artificial neurons. The model with the sigmoid function and 3 input layers, 17 artificial neurons in the first layer, 15 artificial neurons in the second layer, and 2 output nodes had the greatest performance among the 40 configurations of scaled conjugate trained ANNs. It projected an 89.55% maximal hydrogen yield with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.997 and reduced errors with Mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and mean squared error (MSE) of 0.199 and 0.121, respectively. Similarly, the gradient descent ANN model with hyperbolic tangent activation function had the greatest performance among the 40 gradient descent trained-ANN configurations. The 3–15–7–2 gradient descent trained ANN model projected a maximum hydrogen output of 89.73% compared to the experimental results of 89.51%. The MLP-ANN models outperformed nonlinear response surface methods, with R2, MAPE, and MSE of 0.231, 0.191, and 0.988, respectively. The updated Garson algorithm indicated that the input parameters impacted the hydrogen production in the sequence reaction temperature>methane partial pressure>steam partial pressure. The sensitivity analysis might assist identify how resources should be spent.