A paper entitled Advancing production of hydrogen using nuclear cycles - integration of High Temperature Gas- cooled Reactors with Thermochemical Water Splitting Cycles was published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (IF 7.2) on 2nd January 2024.
This publication concerns the coupling of the High-Temperature Gas-cooled nuclear Reactor (HTGR) with the thermochemical water splitting cycles (TWSC) for hydrogen production. The usage of heat from the nuclear cogeneration plant and hydrogen production technologies based on thermochemical water splitting was analyzed. Two most promising ones – copper-chlorine (Cu-Cl) and sulfur-iodine (S-I) cycles have been studied.
These technologies offer a great advantage for applications which seek hydrogen production in systems based mostly on heat with limited electricity available. Such solutions complement high temperature electrolyzers, which require substantial amount of electricity with heat used to boost the performance.
Considering the assumed working conditions of the demonstration HTGR, which is planned for installation at the NCBJ campus and operates at maximal outlet temperatures at ~750 °C, it is recommended to install TWSC Cu-Cl cycle due to its high level of utilization of the available heat and lower complexity of the system (no requirement for additional medium heating). Future designs of the HTGR, such as VHTR, could offer a higher level of the outlet temperature (even 1000 °C) and the TWSC S-I cycle could prove more beneficial hydrogen production method for them.
Link to full article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319923033347
J. Hercog, J. Kupecki, B. Świątkowski, P. Kowalik, A. Boettcher, J. Malesa, E. Skrzypek, M. Skrzypek, D. Muszyński, G. Tchorek, Advancing production of hydrogen using nuclear cycles - integration of high temperature gas-cooled reactors with thermochemical water splitting cycles, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Volume 52, Part B, 2024, Pages 1070-1083.