Thermal and electrical performance analysis of induction heating based-thermochemical reactor for heat storage integration into power systems

In this study, the thermal and electrical performance analysis of an induction heating based-thermochemical reactor is investigated for high-temperature heat storage. The induction-heating model is built with Maxwell equations, and the surface-to-surface (S2S) radiation model is used for the induced and diffused thermal energy flow transport in the fluid phase within the reactor inner cavity. The effects of operating and structural parameters in terms of the coil turn number, coil current intensity and frequency, the conductive plate, and the coil's relative permeability, electrical conductivity, and emissivity could affect the heat generation, input power demand, and energy consumption of the proposed reactor performance are sufficiently investigated. It is found that the reactor temperature distribution resulted from the homogenized multi-turn coil magnetomotive force and frequency with the current intensity 48% more effective in reaching the desired temperature at the heat storage medium. However, the conductive plate relative permeability, electrical conductivity, and surface emissivity significantly affect the induction heating system's thermal power, with the relative permeability having the highest impact of 13% in the storage medium's temperature increasing at low current intensity. Moreover, the surface emissivity shows remarkable effects when the inducting heating operates at a high current. Significant energy consumption, more than 159%, is observed when the induction heating generator operates at steady-state mode. The reactor heating region temperature increases when the reactor operating current and frequency get high. It is observed that the more the induced heat was applied to the reactor, the more the reactor is heating up to a steady-state. The instantaneous temperature distribution inside the reactor depicted the rise in the temperature is caused by convection and radiation heat transfer. Higher and more uniform temperature distribution inside the reactor is obtained by optimizing the reactor operating and structural parameters.