Solar thermochemical reactor, which can produce solar fuel at low cost, suffers discontinuous low-efficiency performance due to solar radiation fluctuation caused by cloud passage. To achieve highly efficient steady and dynamic performance of solar chemical reactor with less catalyst, in this study, catalytic activity is adjusted by diluting catalyst with encapsulated phase change material. At first, two-dimensional model of solar parabolic trough receiver reactors diluted with encapsulated phase change material is established and validated. Then, effect of catalytic activity on performance of reactor is discussed. Afterwards, one-dimensional model is derived from two-dimensional model to train Back Propagation neural network for quick and precise performance prediction of reactor. Finally, optimal catalytic distribution is obtained by genetic algorithm and Back Propagation neural network, and steady and unsteady performance of reactor between uniform and optimal catalytic distribution are compared. The results show that when catalytic activity decreases from 1.0 to 0.2, steady methanol conversion efficiency and production rate of H₂ are reduced by 8.4% and 9.9%, and reactor shows more stability under unsteady condition of solar radiation. One-dimensional model derived in present study is accurate enough and time-saving compared to two-dimensional model. And compared to reactor fully packed with catalyst, reactor with optimal catalytic distribution can achieve similar steady performance with 56% less of catalyst, but shows better stability under the fluctuation of solar radiation.

可以低成本生产太阳能燃料的太阳能热化学反应堆由于云层通过而引起的太阳辐射波动而遭受不连续的低效率性能。为了用更少的催化剂实现太阳能化学反应器的高效稳定和动态性能，在这项研究中，通过用封装的相变材料稀释催化剂来调节催化活性。首先，建立并验证了用封装相变材料稀释的太阳能抛物槽接收器反应堆的二维模型。然后，讨论了催化活性对反应器性能的影响。然后，从二维模型中导出一维模型，以训练反向传播神经网络，以快速准确地预测反应堆的性能。最后，通过遗传算法和反向传播神经网络获得了最佳的催化分布，并比较了均匀和最佳催化分布之间反应堆的稳态和非稳态性能。结果表明，当催化活性从1.0降低到0.2时，稳定的甲醇转化效率和H的产率₂分别降低了8.4％和9.9％，反应器在不稳定的太阳辐射条件下表现出更高的稳定性。与二维模型相比，本研究得出的一维模型足够准确且省时。与完全装满催化剂的反应器相比，具有最佳催化分布的反应器可实现相似的稳定性能，催化剂用量减少56％，但在太阳辐射的波动下表现出更好的稳定性。