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Pulsed Gas Feeding for Stoichiometric Operation of a Gas-Solid Vortex Flow Solar Chemical Reactor
Journal article

Pulsed Gas Feeding for Stoichiometric Operation of a Gas-Solid Vortex Flow Solar Chemical Reactor

  • Kra¨upl, Stefan Solar Process Technology, Paul Scherrer Institute, CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland
  • Steinfeld, Aldo ETH-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Institute of Energy Technology, ETH-Zentrum, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2000-11-1
Published in:
  • Journal of Solar Energy Engineering. - ASME International. - 2000, vol. 123, no. 2, p. 133-137
English The thermodynamic implications of conducting the solar combined ZnO-reduction and CH4-reforming under stoichiometric and non-stoichiometric conditions are examined. For a solar flux concentration ratio of 5000 and for a solar cavity-receiver operating at 1300 K, the solar thermal conversion efficiency is 55 percent for a stoichiometric molar ratio of ZnO and CH4, and decreases by 50 percent when using excess methane by a factor 10 over the stoichiometric molar amount. A technical solution for operating a gas-solid vortex-flow solar reactor under stoichiometric conditions was established by using a pulsed-feed of methane to carry out the particles of ZnO. Using this technique, nearly stoichiometric operation was demonstrated with a prototype reactor in a high-flux solar furnace, thereby opening up a means for efficient conversion of sunlight into chemical fuels.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
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https://sonar.ch/global/documents/95190
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