Coal Coke Gasification in a Windowed Solar Chemical Reactor for Beam-Down Optics

Abstract

Solar thermochemical processes, such as solar gasification of coal, require the development of a high temperature solar reactor operating at temperatures above 1000°C. Direct solar energy absorption by reacting coal particles provides efficient heat transfer directly to the reaction site. In this work, a windowed reactor prototype designed for the beam-down optics was constructed at a laboratory scale and demonstrated for CO2 gasification of coal coke using concentrated visible light from a sun-simulator as the source of energy. Peak conversion of light energy to chemical fuel (CO) of 14% was obtained by irradiating a fluidized bed of 500–710 μm coal coke size fraction with a power input of about 1 kW and a CO2 flow-rate of 6.5 dm3 min−1 at normal conditions.