Steam gasification of coal cokes in an internally circulating fluidized bed of thermal storage material for solar thermochemical processes

•Quartz sand was used as a chemically inert bed material for the fluidized bed.•Coal coke worked as the reacting particles for the endothermic gasification reaction.•Directly light-irradiated reactor was studied for steam gasification of coal cokes.

A laboratory-scale prototype windowed internally circulating fluidized-bed reactor made of quartz sand and coal coke particles was investigated for steam gasification using concentrated Xe-light radiation as the energy source. The quartz sand was used as a chemically inert bed material for the fluidized bed, while the coal coke particles functioned as the reacting particles for the endothermic gasification reaction. The advantages of using quartz sand as the bed material for the directly irradiated gasification reactor are as follows: (1) The bed height is maintained at a constant level during the gasification. (2) The quartz sand functions as a thermal transfer/storage medium inside the reactor. The gasification performances such as the production rates of CO, H2, and CO2; carbon conversion; and light-to-chemical energy conversion were evaluated for the fluidized-bed reactor with a thermal transfer/storage medium (quartz sand). The effects of using the bed material (quartz sand) on the gasification performance are described in this paper.