Spectral properties regulation for the performance improvement of solar-driven methane dry reforming reactor based on the photothermal synergistic catalysis

With the development of chemical industry, many chemical reactions are expected to be directly driven by solar energy. Among them, methane dry reforming (MDR) is a highly promising reaction system. Since all the energy required for MDR comes from solar energy, the temperature distribution and reaction characteristics in the reactor are determined by radiation transportation, and therefore regulating the optical properties according to the spectral distribution characteristics becomes necessary for improving the chemical conversion performance of the reactor. In this paper, aiming at the specific strengthening mechanism of different spectra in photothermal synergistic catalysis, the spectral response characteristics in the reactor were purposefully regulated, so as to achieve the improvement of reactor efficiency and reaction conversion performance. By adjusting the optical properties of compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) and porous catalytic absorber (PCA) in a cavity reactor, the CO₂ conversion can be increased by 68.52%, the CH₄ conversion can be increased by 54.48%, and the solar-fuel efficiency can be increased to 6.16%. This indicates that the selectivity of different bands of full spectrum can significantly affect the reactor performance. Through the above research, this paper aims to provide a new optimization idea for the photothermal reactor.