Effective Heat and Mass Transport Properties of Anisotropic Porous Ceria for Solar Thermochemical Fuel Generation

High-resolution X-ray computed tomography is employed to obtain the exact 3D geometrical configuration of porous anisotropic ceria applied in solar-driven thermochemical cycles for splitting H [Formula: see text] O and CO [Formula: see text]. The tomography data are, in turn, used in direct pore-level numerical simulations for determining the morphological and effective heat/mass transport properties of porous ceria, namely: porosity, specific surface area, pore size distribution, extinction coefficient, thermal conductivity, convective heat transfer coefficient, permeability, Dupuit-Forchheimer coefficient, and tortuosity and residence time distributions. Tailored foam designs for enhanced transport properties are examined by means of adjusting morphologies of artificial ceria samples composed of bimodal distributed overlapping transparent spheres in an opaque medium.