M. W. Abdulrahman, N. Nassar

Abstract: The necessity to investigate a variety of hydrogen production technologies has been prompted by the increasing popularity of hydrogen as an alternative fuel. This investigation investigates the hydrodynamics of the specific substances utilized in the oxygen generation reactor, specifically molten CuCl and oxygen gas, in the context of hydrogen production through the copper-chlorine (Cu-Cl) cycle. In order to accomplish this, a three-dimensional Eulerian-Eulerian Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model is implemented. The primary objective of the study is to verify the precision of material simulations that were conducted in a previous investigation for the oxygen reactor. Helium gas at 90°C and liquid water at 20°C were employed in that investigation to simulate the hydrodynamic behaviour of the actual materials. The three-dimensional O2-CuCl CFD model effectively simulates variations in gas holdup that occur as a result of changes in superficial gas velocity, with a maximum error of 29.9%. This error is the result of the complexity of the 3D multiphase system and the cumulative percentage errors associated with the hydrodynamic dimensionless parameters used in the previous material substitutions. Furthermore, the model shows that the gas holdup values of the actual materials are generally underestimated in comparison to those of the simulated materials.

Keywords: Cu-Cl cycle, 3D CFD, gas holdup, superficial gas velocity, hydrogen production.

Date Published: October 1, 2024
DOI: 10.11159/jffhmt.2024.034

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