Participants: Peter Krenzke, Jane Davidson
Sponsor: Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment
Experimental techniques are developed to characterize high-temperature heterogeneous reacting systems under direct irradiation. Samples of reacting solids are exposed to external irradiation in the high-flux solar simulator under controlled atmospheres, while their instantaneous temperatures and mass, and the product gas composition are acquired. The results are used to analyze mechanisms of chemical reactions, and to validate combined heat transfer and chemical kinetics models that are developed to guide the design of solar thermochemical reactors.