Annual performance of a solar reforming plant for high-temperature thermal processing of minerals

Abstract

The solar reforming of methane can reduce the fossil fuel consumption in the mining industry. To study how the variability of the solar resource impacts on the reforming process and how to minimize this impact on the mineral process, a dynamic model of a solar reforming plant is presented. This work aims to provide a simulation tool to assess plant performance under realistic solar conditions. A plant design with syngas storage has been developed and tested. The work ends with the study of the effect of the size of the solar field and the storage capacity on annual simulations for a specific scenario.