Heat transfer and fluid flow analysis of porous medium solar thermochemical reactor with quartz glass cover

In this paper, heat transfer and fluid flow of porous media solar thermochemical receiver with quartz glass cover were investigated. The Surface-to-surface radiation model and Rosseland approximation for radiation heat transfer were adopted for the transport of diffused solar irradiance and radiative transfer in the fluid phase and porous medium. An experimental test was conducted on a laboratory-scale solar thermochemical reactor. The effects of structural parameters in term of diffused irradiance intensity, the mass flow rate, heat transfer coefficient, quartz glass and inner cavity wall surface emissivity, the porosity and extinction coefficient that could affect heat transfer and fluid flow performance of the proposed solar cavity receiver were sufficiently investigated. It was found that the substantial drops in temperature were mainly attributed to the thermal losses by radiative, convective and conductive heat transfer. The numerical results are compared with the experimental data for the model validation. The thermal loss at the solar flux inlet of the receiver was obviously inevitable due to the stronger effect of heat transfer coefficient that altered the over increasing temperature and heat flux at the surface of diffuse irradiance. However, the use of optimum pore size and higher porosity material could significantly enhance the thermal performance of porous media solar thermochemical reactor.