In this study, numerical simulations and experiments have been carried out to explore the pressure drop and the loss factor in the thermochemical recuperators filled with the catalysts of various shapes. The reaction space of the thermochemical recuperators is presented as the porous packed bed with Ni-Al2O3 catalyst. The commercial program ANSYS Fluent is used. The comparison of the pressure drops between experimental and simulation results showed a good correlation with divergence of results less than 8%. The dependence of the pressure loss for the different depths of the packed bed is approximately linear. To determine the effect of the porosity properties of the medium on numerical results, two cases of CFD modeling were realized (with taking into account the porous medium properties and without it). The discrepancy between results is increasing with an increase of the gas velocity, while for the low velocities the results are almost similar. A recommendation for the engineering solutions is given, for saving calculation time at the low velocity, the packed bed can be considered as a solid body and the porous media properties can be ignored in the numerical model. Recommendations for engineering calculations of the thermochemical recuperation system are given. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.