Thermochemical analysis of dry methane reforming hydrogen production in biomimetic venous hierarchical porous structure solar reactor for improving energy storage

Due to the high working temperature and solar energy is the sole energy resource, radiative transfer field has a significant influence on the solar driven methane reforming conversion efficiency. In order to improve the conversion efficiency of solar driven methane reforming, the idea of using biomimetic venous hierarchical porous structure as solar thermochemical reactor is proposed to regulate the radiative transfer field, which in turn can optimize the temperature field. Through a Finite Volume Method (FVM) combined with thermochemical kinetics, a numerical analysis model of solar driven dry methane reforming (DMR) is established. The effects of different pore diameter combinations (d₁, d₂, and d₃) and partition positions (L₁ and R₁) on the thermochemical performance of reforming are analyzed. The results show that by introducing a biomimetic venous hierarchical porous structure, the methane conversion can be improved by up to 5.9%, which can provide guidance for the optimal design of the solar thermochemical reactor.