Reactor design for thermal decomposition of hydrocarbons and tar by means of silicon carbide as microwave absorber

This work proposes a new geometry of a reactor for thermal decomposition of hydrocarbons and tar set to flow through a tube of silicon carbide (SiC), which heats up to achieve temperatures till to 1000°C and efficiently avoids the blocking effect of the tar decomposition when raw tar is employed. The reactor was designed with the aid of numerical simulation using the Partial Differential Equation (PDE) Toolbox from the MATLAB platform. In addition, it is presented experimental results of tar decomposition using a SiC crucible and the SiC tube of the reactor, both heated by microwave absorption. These experiments indicated the feasibility of tar decomposition and the fabricated reactor presented the transfer of microwave power to the accumulated thermal energy in the SiC tube in good agreement with the results of the numerical simulations.