A transient simulation-based approach for hydrogen production assessment from concentrating solar thermal collectors

In this paper, a novel mathematical model purposely developed to assess the energy performance of solar-driven thermochemical reactors for green hydrogen production is presented. To this aim, a theoretical analysis about materials, operating principle and geometry of a suitable system consisting of a thermochemical reactor coupled to a solar dish concentrator is conducted. Specifically, the carried-out study refers to iron oxides and cerium reactors since different activation temperatures are observed for them (iron oxides devices allow producing hydrogen at around 640°C, whilst much higher temperatures are necessary for cerium). The obtained dynamic simulation code, written in MatLab, is based on a detailed transient finite-difference thermal network where both the thermochemical reactor and solar dish concentrator are discretized in several sub-volumes. Details about the heat transfer through the thermochemical reactor (dynamically assessed via a customised resistive-capacitive thermal network) are also provided.