Chemical Engineering Commons^™

Modeling The Direct Solar Conversion Of Co2 To Co And O2, Thomas H. Fletcher

Faculty Publications

At high temperatures (greater than 2300 K), CO₂ is known to dissociate to CO and O. A prototype solar collector was previously demonstrated to achieve such high temperatures, achieving 4-6 mol % CO in the product stream from an inlet stream of pure CO₂. This paper describes the results of computer modeling performed to determine the flow, temperature, and reactions occurring in the prototype device. Of particular interest are the heat-transfer and reaction mechanisms involved and how much photolysis occurs in the prototype. Predictions were performed with two different computational fluid dynamic codes (Fluent and PCGC-3). The …