As an essential part of hydrogen removal system in nuclear power plants, PARs could effectively eliminate released hydrogen and prevent potential hydrogen combustion during severe accidents. Serving as a basic composition in the catalytic section of PARs, catalytic element has a direct influence on the hydrogen removal capability of the PAR device. The CFD software STAR-CCM+ was utilized to develop models of catalytic channels containing three common catalytic elements (including catalytic plates, catalytic cylinders, and catalytic spheres). The elementary reaction mechanism was employed as the reaction kinetics model to define the chemical reaction process. This paper aims to evaluate the hydrogen removal capability of the catalytic elements in same operating conditions and analyze important factors for designing the structure of catalytic elements. All the catalytic surface area of catalytic elements was set to 0.045 m2 and inlet boundary conditions were settled identically. Our findings show that catalytic sphere exhibits the best hydrogen removal capability, which is attributed to the large lower half catalytic surface area of spheres. Catalytic plate with a lower height also demonstrates excellent hydrogen removal capability because of the presence of a larger catalytic area in the leading section. However, the hydrogen removal capability of catalytic cylinder is affected by the boundary layer separation vortex. A noticeable decrease in reaction rate occurs on the lower part of the sidewall surface, especially in the catalytic cylinder with a larger radius. In the structure design of catalytic elements, enlarging the catalytic surface area in the leading section and avoiding boundary layer separation on the catalytic surface are essential to further improve the hydrogen removal capability. •Investigation on hydrogen removal capability of common catalytic elements.•Catalytic sphere exhibits the best hydrogen removal capability.•Enlarging catalytic surface area in the leading section eliminate more hydrogen.•Boundary layer separation retards the hydrogen removal rate.