Improving the performance of porous volumetric solar reactor with biomimetic leaf vein structures and spectrally selective gradual porous parameters

Abstract

The steam reforming of methane to hydrogen production in porous volumetric solar reactor is a promising way for solar energy utilization, which realize the conversion of solar energy to chemical energy. Due to the strong non-uniform volumetric inner heat source distribution in the porous catalyst and the varying concentration of methane, the porosity and pore diameter distribution of the porous catalyst should be carefully designed to improve the thermochemical performance. We firstly design a solar porous media volumetric reactor with a leaf vein bionic structure. Then, we numerically analyze the impact of leaf vein structure and pore size on the thermochemical performance of the reactor. The results show that the bionic leaf vein structure can regulate the distribution of methane and improve the chemical reaction rate. Compared with the traditional reactor, the reactor with non-parallel biomimetic leaf vein structure II can increase the methane conversion rate by 8.11 %. The pore size difference between the two regions is 0.5 mm that is limited within a small range, and the reactor has good performance. This paper can provide a guidance for porous volumetric solar reactor design to improve the thermochemical reactions performance.