太阳能甲醇重整制氢过程催化剂颗粒床特性及综合性能数值分析

The porous media model with uniform porosity assumption has been usually adopted in the numerical studies of solar-driven methanol-steam reforming hydrogen production systems, due to the limitation of mesh generation and computational cost. But it’s difficult to accurately simulate the multicomponent heat-mass transport and chemical reaction processes. In this paper, the advantages of both the particle-resolved model and the porous media model were combined to develop a comprehensive numerical model for the parabolic trough solar receiver-reactor based on the relatively actual porosity distribution of the catalyst particle packed bed. The simulation result of the proposed model was compared with that of the traditional porous media model with the uniform porosity. It is found that the porosity distribution has a great impact on the system performance, and the proposed model with the relatively actual porosity distribution can better simulate the actual operation. Based on these, the effect of the catalyst particle size and operating parameters on the comprehensive performance of the parabolic trough solar receiver-reactor was further investigated.