Study on solar syngas production and combined cycle efficiency

Membrane reactor is an isothermal continuous thermochemical reactor which has a high efficiency. Syngas generated by solar thermochemical methane reforming reaction based on membrane reactor has a higher heating value than methane, and it can be fed into combined cycle (CC) as fuel for power generation, which achieves the complementation between solar energy and fossil energy. A theoretical framework is established for understanding of solar thermochemical syngas production with oxygen permeation membrane in this paper. The variation of syngas generation efficiencies with the molar ratio of H₂O/CO₂ under different heat recovery efficiencies are investigated, and the influence of heat recovery efficiencies to the total power generation efficiencies are discussed afterwards, which leads to the change rule of total system power generation efficiency variation. The total system power generation efficiency can be as high as almost 40% at the temperature of 1200℃. Compared with traditional methane reforming system, the conversion ratio of methane is higher and more solar energy can be transformed into chemical energy, and the purity of production is high in membrane reactor, which has a promising practical applications.