Analysis of radiation heat transfer and temperature distributions of solar thermochemical reactor for syngas production

This paper investigated radiation heat transfer and temperature distributions of solar thermochemical reactor for syngas production using the finite volume discrete ordinate method (fvDOM) and P1 approximation for radiation heat transfer. Different parameters including absorptivity, emissivity, reflection based radiation scattering, and carrier gas flow inlet velocity that would greatly affect the reactor thermal performance were sufficiently investigated. The fvDOM approximation was used to obtain the radiation intensity distribution along the reactor. The drop in the temperature resulted from the radiation scattering was further investigated using the P1 approximation. The results indicated that the reactor temperature difference between the P1 approximation and the fvDOM radiation model was very close under different operating conditions. However, a big temperature difference which increased with an increase in the radiation emissivity due to the thermal non-equilibrium was observed in the radiation inlet region. It was found that the incident radiation flux distribution had a strong impact on the temperature distribution throughout the reactor. This paper revealed that the temperature drop caused by the boundary radiation heat loss should not be neglected for the thermal performance analysis of solar thermochemical reactor.