Numerical Modeling of Vapor Condensation During Cadmium Quenching Process in a Solar Receiver

Cadmium quencher is an important equipment for the high efficiency generation of hydrogen fuel using solar thermochemical splitting of water. In order to effectively guide the design of solar decomposer and vapor quencher, it is of critical importance to understand the mechanisms of transport phenomena inside them. The mixture model was selected for modeling the multiphase flow, and the two-equation RNG k-ε model was used to model the turbulent flow and heat transfer. Numerical results showed that flowrate of the quencher air directly influences the velocity, temperature and mole fraction of cadmium vapor inside the decomposer and quencher. The developed CFD model can be used to guide the design of efficient solar receiver and cadmium decomposer/quencher.