Fluidization analysis for catalytic decomposition of methane over carbon blacks for solar hydrogen production

Abstract

A series of bed collapse tests were conducted for determining the dense fluidization flow rate of a gas-solid mixture in a micro-channel fluidized bed reactor, and a separate simulation was created for calculating the reactor conversion and temperature of the catalytic methane pyrolysis. The minimum fluidization and minimum bubbling flow rates were determined to be 3.04 and 8.07 sccm for a 2 × 4 mm2 reactor channel with an average voidage of 0.57; 6.21 and 15.9 sccm for a 4 × 6 mm2 channel with an average voidage of 0.42, respectively. By building a correlation between these critical velocities and the cross-sectional area of the fluidized bed reactor channel, the dense fluidization flow rate at the micro-/mini-channel level with an internal diameter range from 0.3 to 1 mm is predicted between 1.47 to 4.21 sccm. In the simulation, an internal diameter of 0.6 mm, a 10-kW solar input rate, and an initial gas flow rate from 0.08 to 0.23 sccm that expands to 1.5–4.3 ccm at the reaction temperature, are considered as the optimal conditions to maintain a reasonable conversion of methane pyrolysis and to keep the mixed fluid in the dense fluidization within the laminar flow range. The conversion of 79% under these conditions was calculated numerically and found to be promising compared to literature reports. An additional force analysis on a single carbon black particle is shown with different reactor orientations to validate the experimental data and simulation results.