Improving the octane number of the aromatics compounds has always been an important matter in refineries and lots of investigations have been made concerning this issue In this study an axial flow spherical packed bed reactor (AF SPBR) is considered for naphtha reforming process in the presence of catalyst deactivation Model equations are solved by the orthogonal collocation method The AF SPBR results are compared with the plant data of a conventional tubular packed bed reactor (TR) The effects of some important parameters such as pressure and temperature on aromatic and hydrogen production rates and catalyst activity have been investigated Higher production rates of aromatics can successfully be achieved in this novel reactor Moreover results show the capability of flow augmentation in the proposed configuration in comparison with the TR This study shows the superiority of AF SPBR configuration to the conventional types (C) 2010 Professor T Nejat Veziroglu Published by Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved