RESEARCH ARTICLE

A new approach for fuel injection into a solar receiver/reactor: Numerical and experimental investigation

  • M Helal Uddin 1 ,
  • Nesrin Ozalp , 1 ,
  • Jens Heylen 2 ,
  • Cedric Ophoff 2
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  • 1. Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN 55812-3042, USA
  • 2. Mechanical Engineering Department, 3001 Leuven, Belgium

Received date: 12 Mar 2018

Accepted date: 15 Jul 2018

Published date: 03 Jan 2019

Copyright

2018 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature

Abstract

An innovative and efficient design of solar receivers/reactors can enhance the production of clean fuels via concentrated solar energy. This study presents a new jet-type burner nozzle for gaseous feedstock injection into a cavity solar receiver inspired from the combustion technology. The nozzle design was adapted from a combustion burner and successfully implemented into a solar receiver and studied the influence of the nozzle design on the fluid mixing and temperature distribution inside the solar receiver using a 7 kW solar simulator and nitrogen as working fluid. Finally, a thorough computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed and validated against the experimental results. The CFD results showed a variation of the gas flow pattern and gas mixing after the burner nozzle adaptation, which resulted an intense effect on the heat transfer inside the solar receiver.

Cite this article

M Helal Uddin , Nesrin Ozalp , Jens Heylen , Cedric Ophoff . A new approach for fuel injection into a solar receiver/reactor: Numerical and experimental investigation[J]. Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering, 2018 , 12(4) : 683 -696 . DOI: 10.1007/s11705-018-1782-z

Acknowledgment

Experimental portion of this research was funded by the Impulse Fund project # IMP/14/049 of KU Leuven. The authors also acknowledge the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) at the University of Minnesota for providing resources that contributed to the research results reported within this paper.
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