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Numerical investigation of thermal disassociation of ZnO for hydrogen production: Parametric study and reactor configuration
Author(s) -
Khan Furqan Ahmad,
Siddiqui Kamran
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
international journal of energy research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.808
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1099-114X
pISSN - 0363-907X
DOI - 10.1002/er.3097
Subject(s) - hydrogen production , computational fluid dynamics , hydrogen , endothermic process , volumetric flow rate , mass flow rate , materials science , water splitting , thermal , parametric statistics , mechanics , nuclear engineering , chemistry , thermodynamics , physics , engineering , mathematics , catalysis , adsorption , statistics , organic chemistry , biochemistry , photocatalysis
SUMMARY The present research is focused on the two‐step ZnO/Zn thermochemical water splitting cycle for hydrogen production. In the present paper, the numerical modeling of the first step, which involves endothermic reduction of zinc oxide (ZnO), is carried out in a cylindrical reactor using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The parametric study shows that the fractional conversion of ZnO increases with an increase in the flow rate of ZnO, while it decreases with an increase in the ZnO particle diameter and carrier gas mass flow rate. Six different reactor configurations are also assessed comprehensively. It is observed that a cylindrical reactor with a tangential inlet at the top plane and a tangential outlet at the bottom plane has higher robustness to the variation of various operating parameters with consistently high ZnO fractional conversion. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.