Heat transfer analysis of porous media receiver with different transport and thermophysical models using mixture as feeding gas

Abstract

• Using local thermal non-equilibrium model to solve heat transfer of porous media. • CH 4 /H 2 O mixture is adopted as feeding gas of porous media receiver. • Radiative transfer equation between porous strut is solved by Rosseland approximation. • Transport and thermophysical models not included in Fluent are programmed by UDFs. • Variations of model on thermal performance of porous media receiver are studied. The local thermal non-equilibrium model is adopted to solve the steady state heat and mass transfer problems of porous media solar receiver. The fluid entrance surface is subjected to concentrated solar radiation, and CH 4 /H 2 O mixture is adopted as feeding gas. The radiative heat transfer equation between porous strut is solved by Rosseland approximation. The impacts of variation in transport and thermophysical characteristics model of gas mixture on thermal performance of porous media receiver are investigated. The transport and thermophysical characteristics models which are not included in software Fluent are programmed by user defined functions (UDFs). The numerical results indicate that models of momentum source term for porous media receiver have significant impact on pressure drop and static pressure distribution, and the radiative heat transfer cannot be omitted during the thermal performance analysis of porous media receiver.