A solar methane reforming reactor design with enhanced efficiency

Jian Jin, Xin Wei, Mingkai Liu, Yuhang Yu, Wenjia Li, Hui Kong and Yong Hao

Applied Energy, 2018, vol. 226, issue C, 797-807

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 2400 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 850 °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 850 °C and pressure of 1 atm. The new reactor design could considerably increase the utilization efficiency of solar energy.

Keywords: Solar methane reforming; Thermochemical reactor; Cutoff wavelength coating; Compound parabolic concentrator; Efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:226:y:2018:i:c:p:797-807

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DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.04.098

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