Hydrogen energy, as one of the most environmentally friendly energy sources, has been widely concerned over the world. There have been several researches focus on using nuclear energy to produce hydrogen and developing clean hybrid energy system, which is a very promising direction and a hotspot in the world. This paper proposes a coordinated control scheme for a nuclear hydrogen production plant. The plant can be mainly divided into two parts, which are nuclear island and hydrogen production process. The nuclear island consists of several nuclear steam supply system (NSSS) based on modular high temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR), which can provide a high quality steam of nearly 600℃ and sufficient heat source for hydrogen production process. The hydrogen production process mainly includes copper-chloride (Cu-Cl) cycle, high temperature electrolysis (HTE) and feedwater heating system. The live steam generated from the nuclear island are all used for heating hydrolysis and decomposition reactions of the Cu-Cl cycle. The part of steam from Cu-CL cycle is continually used to heat the reactant of HTE process, and the other part is fed into the feedwater heater, and the heated feedwater is then redistributed to each NSSS module again.

This paper focuses on the coordinated control of nuclear hydrogen production plant, which can be divided into two modes: namely “turbine following reactor” and “reactor following turbine”. In the operation mode of "turbine following reactor", by adjusting the reactor power of nuclear island, the flowrate of live steam can be changed, and then the output of hydrogen production process can accordingly vary. In the operation mode of “reactor following turbine”, the reactor power of nuclear island can be changed by adjusting the production of hydrogen, so as to generate the corresponding steam flowrate. The proposed nuclear hydrogen production plant coordinated control scheme is simulated and verified in the software based on MATLAB/Simulink platform. The simulation results show that under the operation mode of both “turbine flowing reactor” and “reactor following turbine”, the nuclear hydrogen production plant can operate stably at different power levels, and in the transient state of power change, each key process variable meets the operation requirement. The coordinated control scheme proposed in this paper lays a foundation for further research on the development of nuclear hydrogen hybrid energy system.


Cogeneration of Multi-Modelar High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor Based on Cu-Cl Cycle and High Temperature Electrolysis

Division / Sponsors: 
Power Division & Nuclear Engineering Division (NED)

Power Conference
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/POWER/POWER2020/volume/83747

International Conference on Nuclear Engineering
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/ICONE/ICONE2020/volume/83761

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