Education
- Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder听
- B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder
Various solar thermal processes, including metal oxide water splitting cycles and high temperature gasification of cellulosic biomass to syngas, have been proposed as renewable routes to hydrogen or liquid fuels.听 These processes use concentrated solar energy to achieve high temperatures and drive strongly endothermic chemical reactions, and are theoretically entirely renewable and carbon neutral.听 Yet they cannot be exploited on a large scale without detailed knowledge and understanding of the solar receiver, as their economic feasibility is strongly dependent on the effectiveness with which the solar reactor can capture the supplied energy in the chemical products.听 Aerosol flow reactors have been shown to possess properties beneficial to solar-thermal processing such as rapid heating rates, kinetically controlled reactions, and short residence times but previous single tube designs have invariably suffered from inadequately low efficiency.听 An updated reflective cavity/receiver design enclosing multiple flow tubes is expected to limit re-radiation losses and thus enhance efficiency while maintaining the inherent advantages and high chemical conversion achieved in single tube designs.听 The primary objective of my project is to develop a fundamental understanding of both transport processes occurring within closed cavity solar aerosol flow reactors, as well as efficiency limitations and factors driving reactor efficiency, with the aim of moving from a largely empirical to a more fundamental theoretical approach for solar reactor design.听 To this end, an experimentally validated computational fluid dynamics model of a multiple tube solar aerosol flow reactor will be developed using finite volume schemes to solve fundamental heat, mass, momentum, and radiation transport equations.听 This model will then be used to identify main factors influencing chemical conversion and reactor efficiency, to quantify the impacts of these factors, and to optimize reactor performance via consideration of reactor geometry and operating conditions.