A diffusion-based approximate model for radiation heat transfer in a solar thermochemical reactor

An approximate numerical method for fast calculations of the radiation heat transfer in a solar thermochemical reactor cavity is formulated based on the separate treatment of the solar and thermal radiative exchange by the diffusion approach. The usual P1 approximation is generalized by applying an equivalent radiation diffusion coefficient for the optically thin central part of the cavity. The resulting boundary-value problems are solved using the finite element algorithm. The accuracy of the model is assessed by comparing the results to those obtained by a pathlength-based Monte Carlo simulation. The applicability of the proposed model is demonstrated by performing calculations for an example problem, which incorporates a range of parameters typical for a solar chemical reactor and the spectral radiative properties of polydisperse zinc oxide particles.