Development of hydraulic analysis code for optimizing thermo-chemical IS process reactors

Terada, Atsuhiko  ; Hino, Ryutaro; Hirayama, Toshio; Nakajima, Norihiro  ; Sugiyama, Hitoshi*

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency has been conducting study on thermochemical IS process for water splitting hydrogen production. Based on the test results and know-how obtained through the bench-scale test, a pilot test plant, which has a hydrogen production performance of 30 Nm/h, is being designed conceptually as the next step of the IS process development. In design of the IS pilot plant, it is important to make chemical reactors compact with high performance from the viewpoint of plant cost reduction. A new hydraulic analytical code has been developed for optimizing mixing performance of multi-phase flow involving chemical reactions especially in the Bunsen reactor. Preliminary analytical results obtained with above mentioned code, especially flow patterns induced by swirling flow agreed well with that measured by water experiments, which showed vortex breakdown pattern in a simplified Bunsen reactor.