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

Solar thermochemical processes, such as solar gasification of coal, require the development of a high temperature solar reactor operating at temperatures above 1000 degrees 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 CO(2) 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 mu m coal coke size fraction with a power input of about 1 kW and a CO(2) flow-rate of 6.5 dm(3) min(-1) at normal conditions. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4002081]