Modeling and numerical simulation of concentrated solar energy storage using fluidized bed systems

One of the challenges to using concentrated solar energy (CSE) is the development of innovative fluids or mixtures of fluid and particle systems to efficiently adsorb concentrated solar radiation and transfer heat. In this article, the large-eddy simulation (LES) model and a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach were used to simulate CSE absorption by a fluidized bed of silicon carbide (SiC). Drag-forced modification was developed based on the Clark sub-grid model for fluidized beds. The result of our two-dimensional simulation agreed well with Tregambi et al. experimental data. Our simulation showed that the fluidized bed reduced the surface temperature by convective energy transfer, which is only on the surface for the incipiently fluidized bed and in the entire fluidized bed for the bubbling fluidized bed due to the mixing created by bubbles. The lower temperature on the surface significantly decreased the radiative energy loss from the surface to the environment.