Experimental and numerical study on thermal performance of an indirectly irradiated solar reactor with a clapboard-type internally circulating fluidized bed

Xian Li, Liping Wei, Chia Wei Lim, Jialing Chen, Peng Chu, Wojciech Lipiński, Ning Yan, Yanjun Dai and Chi-Hwa Wang

Applied Energy, 2022, vol. 305, issue C, No S0306261921012800

Abstract: Fluidized-bed based solar reactors for the gasification of biomass have been widely recognized as a promising approach to produce high-quality syngas due to the merits, e.g. continuous operation and superior heat and mass transport. In this work, a novel high-temperature solar reactor with a clapboard-type internally circulating configuration that can efficiently mitigate the overheating of the bed wall affected by non-uniform solar radiation, is designed, constructed, and experimentally investigated under Singapore’s first 28 kWe high-flux solar simulator. To investigate the flow dynamics in the high-temperature solar reactor, a transient 3D computational fluid dynamics multi-phase model is developed accordingly and validated by the experimental data. The simulated results can well clarify the flow and thermal behaviours in experiments. The effects of the gas flow rate and bed mass on the thermal performances of different Group-B particle materials are studied through experiments and simulation. The results indicate that increasing the bed mass in the solar reactor is capable of mitigating the overheating of the absorber surface caused by hot spots. The gas flow rate is dependent on the particle thermo-physical properties and shape as well as the clapboard geometric parameters. The highest solar-to-thermal conversion efficiency (defined as the ratio of the accumulated sensible heat of the particles to the solar power input) of 10.7 ± 0.4% is achieved by SiC due to its superior thermal conductivity.

Keywords: Solar reactor; Internally circulating fluidized bed; Thermal performance; Two-phase flow; Clapboard; Particle circulating rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261921012800
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:305:y:2022:i:c:s0306261921012800

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.117976

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().