Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6679852 | Applied Energy | 2018 | 11 Pages |
Abstract
We report an efficiency-enhanced solar methane reforming reactor design, featuring cutoff wavelength coating over quartz window for incident solar energy, a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) device for thermochemical performance enhancement and reticulated porous ceramics (RPC) structure of Ni/CeO2-ZrO2 used as the catalyst. A numerical model combining Monte-Carlo ray-tracing (MCRT) method with finite-element method (FEM) is established to evaluate the effectiveness of this reactor design. The simulation results show that the cutoff wavelength coating (with threshold wavelength of 2400â¯nm) helps to reduce 80% radiation heat loss from within the reactor at the cost of only 1% incident sunlight loss during transmission at a typical reforming temperature of 850â¯Â°C. The performance of the reactor is numerically investigated under different reaction conditions with wide ranges of temperature, solar power input and steam-to-methane ratio. Results show that ηsolar-chemical (solar-to-chemical efficiency) can reach 39.98% and 59.16% without and with 90% heat recovery, respectively, and XCH4 (methane conversion) is 83.95% at reforming temperature of 850â¯Â°C and pressure of 1â¯atm. The new reactor design could considerably increase the utilization efficiency of solar energy.
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Authors
Jian Jin, Xin Wei, Mingkai Liu, Yuhang Yu, Wenjia Li, Hui Kong, Yong Hao,