Thermal Model of a Solar Thermochemical Reactor for Metal Oxide Reduction

Abstract

A transient heat transfer model is developed to study the thermal performance of a high-temperature solar thermochemical reactor for metal oxide reduction. The solar reactor consists of an indirectly irradiated tubular fluidized bed contained in a solar cavity receiver. Radiative heat transfer in the cavity, modeled with the Monte Carlo ray-tracing method, is coupled to conduction in the tube and cavity walls. Incident radiation distributions from a diffuse radiative source and a high-flux solar simulator are implemented separately in the model to study the influence of incident radiation directionality on the performance of the reactor. Maximum temperature, maximum thermal stress, start-up time, energy balance, and particle reduction rate for the proposed reactor concept are calculated to inform the design and optimization of a prototype reactor.

Regulating thermochemical redox temperature via oxygen defect engineering for protection of solar molten salt receivers

“…Wang et al studied the redox performance of iron-manganese oxide particles in a packed-bed solar thermochemical reactor (Wang et al, 2021). A coupling model was also developed to verify and optimize the reactor concept (Wang et al, 2020). For the protection of solar molten salt receivers, redox reactions around 650 C with fast kinetics and robust stability are desired, where an appropriate candidate from metal oxides is still missing (Dizaji and Hosseini, 2018;Pardo et al, 2014;Carrillo et al, 2016bCarrillo et al, , 2016cHamidi et al, 2019;Andre ´et al, 2018).…”

Thermodynamic Analysis of a Conceptual Fixed-Bed Solar Thermochemical Cavity Receiver–Reactor Array for Water Splitting Via Ceria Redox Cycling

“…Many reactor designs were proposed and tested with the ultimate goal of improving the solar-to-fuel efficiency Diver et al, 2010;Lapp et al, 2013;Dähler et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2021). They can be categorized into designs with solid and/or gas heat recuperation (Ermanoski et al, 2013;Lapp and Lipiński, 2014;Hathaway et al, 2016) and designs without heat recuperation (Welte et al, 2016;Marxer et al, 2017).…”