A heat exchanger to transfer the heat generated from a nuclear reactor to a sulfur-iodine hydrogen production system has been developed. This heat exchanger operates in the extreme environments of a high corrosion, a high temperature, and a high differential pressure. A coating and ion beam mixing surface modification technology are applied to the process heat exchanger in order to enhance its corrosion resistance without loosing the manufacturability of the metal. A Ni-based super alloy is coated with a silicon carbide to enhance its corrosion resistance. The development of heat exchanger including shape design, thermal sizing, ion beam mixing process, stress analysis, and the manufacturing of small scale mock-up heat exchanger are discussed in this paper. The heat exchanger is a hybrid type to meet the design pressure requirements between a nuclear system and a hydrogen production system. A thermal sizing procedure for the process heat exchanger by considering the heat of sulfuric acid gas decomposition is developed. A finite element stress analysis is carried out by using the temperature profile obtained from the thermal sizing calculation. The finite element models were studied to simulate the stress state of the heat exchanger. Two-dimensional analysis was performed at the entrance region of the heat exchanger. A three-dimensional analysis for a single effective heat transfer channel was performed to investigate three-dimensional stress state. Stress analysis results have shown that the developed heat exchanger can withstand the required pressure difference at the elevated temperature condition. A small size heat exchanger was fabricated in order to test it in a high temperature nitrogen-gas loop. The fabrication of the heat exchanger includes a machining of the flow path, a coating and ion beam mixing, and a diffusion bonding of the heat transfer plate.

A R&D programme has been launched addressing the needs of the development of an indirect cycle flexible modular HTR operating at 850°C for electricity generation and/or heat production for industrial processes. In the frame of this program, several significant technical challenges required to demonstrate the viability and performance of the system have been successfully addressed. Design and safety analysis needed the development of computational tools, therefore reactor physics, and thermo-fluid dynamics codes have been developed and are now in the process of being validated in the frame of international code-to-code and code to experiment benchmarks. Most importantly, the performance of the HTR/VHTR fuel identified as TRISO-coated particle must prove to be excellent in operating as well as accidental conditions. A manufacturing and quality control process has been developed and now fuel qualification based on irradiation and heating safety tests is being prepared on the basis of irradiation programs in France and in the frame of the GENERATION IV International Forum (GIF) as well as the development of fuel behaviour models including performance data, failure particle prediction and long-term integrity of the coating. Material and component technologies have been investigated in normal and accident conditions for V/HTR objectives. Significant progress has been made for vessel structures and reactor core structural elements. Major challenges still lie ahead for plate type compact intermediate heat exchangers, especially at temperatures above 850°C, but an alternative solution with helical tubes is also being developed. In order to demonstrate that materials have adequate performance over long service life under impure helium environment and constraints, the research programme focuses on microstructural and mechanical property data, long-term irradiation behaviour, corrosion, modelling and codification of design rules as well as qualification of components in representative helium test loops. The potential of this type of reactor for higher performances in terms of fuel burn-up and temperature (VHTR objective) has been explored, in particular for application to hydrogen production. The major research axes on hydrogen production technologies include the development and optimization of high temperature electrolysis and thermo-chemical water splitting processes such as sulphur/iodine or hybrid sulphur. Alternative thermo-chemical hydrogen generation processes operating at lower temperatures are also investigated. This paper addresses the R&D work performed since 2001 and the future work anticipated until 2012, where decisions about a demonstrator could be made at a European level within the Sustainable Nuclear Energy Technological Platform (SNE-TP). This program is strongly connected to the Euratom Framework Programmes as well as to GIF.

The Hybrid Sulfur Process is a leading candidate among the thermochemical cycles being developed to use heat from advanced nuclear reactors to produce hydrogen via watersplitting. It has the potential for high efficiency, competitive cost of hydrogen, and it has been demonstrated at a laboratory scale to confirm performance characteristics. The major developmental issues with the HyS Process involve the design and performance of a sulfur dioxide depolarized electrolyzer, the key component for conducting the electrochemical step in the process. This paper will discuss the development program and current status for the SDE being conducted at the Savannah River National Laboratory.

In order to establish the optimal start-up method and to understand the dynamic behavior of the SI process coupled to a VHTR through an Intermediate Heat Exchanger (IHX), the development of a dynamic simulation code is necessary. Perturbation of the flow rate or temperature in input streams may result in various transient states. An understanding of the dynamic behavior due to these factors is very important to establish a safe operation method for a hydrogen production plant including a VHTR. Based on the mass and energy balance sheets of an electrodialysis-embedded SI process, proposed by KAERI, equivalent to a 200 MW th VHTR, not only the establishment of a thermal pathway (draft) between the SI process and the VHTR system but also the equipment sizing required in the SI process was carried out. A dynamic simulation code for the SI –2 nd Skid (sulfuric acid concentration and decomposition part) was prepared at first for each chemical reactor. The reliability of the computer code has been confirmed by the convergence value at a steady state. This confirmation has been performed for the primary and secondary sulfuric acid distillation columns, the sulfuric acid vaporizer, the sulfuric acid decomposer, and the sulfur trioxide decomposer, respectively. An integrated computer code with a visualization function has been prepared by coupling each proven computer code, according to the thermal pathway. The dynamic behaviors of the integrated the SI-2 nd Skid according to several anticipated scenarios were evaluated and the dominant and mild factors are discussed.

The Hybrid Sulfur (HyS) Process is being developed to produce hydrogen by water-splitting using heat from advanced nuclear reactors. It has the potential for high efficiency and competitive hydrogen production cost, and has been demonstrated at a laboratory scale.

The utilization of alternate sources of energy is becoming more important due to the constantly growing world-wide demand for energy. The production of hydrogen via the Hybrid Sulphur process is a possible alternative that may contribute to alleviating the pressure on energy resources. The current field of interest is to investigate the operation of the sulphuric acid decomposition reactor operating at pressure ranges between 8 and 9 MPa. The reduction of SO 3 to SO 2 is, however, favoured at low pressures while maintaining high operating temperatures. Considering this, the need to investigate the possibility of operating at lower operating pressures is important in striving for higher process efficiencies. The proposed decomposition reactor is a multi-stage reactor system operated adiabatically with inter-stage heating in order to simplify the reactor design and improve the over-all conversion and efficiency of the process. At a pressure of 8–9 MPa and temperature of 900°C, the maximum conversion of SO 3 to SO 2 that can be achieved is between 48% and 54%. The proposed multi-stage reactor system has 5 packed bed (catalyst) reactor stages with 4 intermediate heat exchangers, and by lowering the operating pressure to 3 kPa, a maximum conversion of 72% could be achieved. The viability of the HyS process mainly depends on the performance of the SO 3 decomposition reactor.

Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), General Atomics Corporation (GA) and the French Commissariat a` l’Energie Atomique (CEA) have been conducting laboratory-scale experiments to investigate the thermochemical production of hydrogen using the Sulfur-Iodine (S-I) process. This project is being conducted as an International Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (INERI) project supported by the CEA and US DOE Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative. In the S-I process, 1) H 2 SO 4 is catalytically decomposed at high temperature to produce SO 2 , O 2 and H 2 O. 2) The SO 2 is reacted with H 2 O and I 2 to produce HI and H 2 SO 4 . The H 2 SO 4 is returned to the acid decomposer. 3) The HI is decomposed to H 2 and I 2 . The I 2 is returned to the HI production process. Each participant in this work is developing one of the three primary reaction sections. SNL is responsible for the H 2 SO 4 decomposition section, CEA, the primary HI production section and General Atomics, the HI decomposition section. The objective of initial testing of the S-I laboratory-scale experiment was to establish the capability for integrated operations and demonstrate H 2 production from the S-I cycle. The first phase of these objectives was achieved with the successful integrated operation of the SNL acid decomposition and CEA Bunsen reactor sections and the subsequent generation of H 2 in the GA HI decomposition section. This is the first time the S-I cycle has been realized using engineering materials and operated at prototypic temperature and pressure to produce hydrogen.

The Sulfur-Iodine thermochemical cycle offers a promising approach to the high efficiency production of hydrogen from nuclear power. Several SI cycles have been proposed by several research group. General Atomic (GA) studied I 2 separation by extractive distillation using H 3 PO 4 . RWTH introduced the concept of reactive distillation. In this process, HIx stream coming from the Bunsen reaction is fed to the column. And HIx is distillated and decomposed at the same time to obtain hydrogen. Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) and Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) concentrate HIx using electro-dialysis cell and concentrated HIx is fed to the column to produce HI vapor, which is decomposed to produce hydrogen. HI was separated from HIx solution by an extractive distillation using H 3 PO 4 . However, a large amount of electric energy was required to recycle H 3 PO 4 . Most of SI processes have difficulties producing hydrogen because it has excess iodine in HI decomposition Section. SI cycle with electrodialysis cell uses membrane reactor to separate H 2 and HIx. The current state of the membrane technology is not compatible with the process needs. This study examined several cases of flowsheets to overcome the problems mentioned above. The flowsheets were revised by adding the iodine separator and excluding membrane reactor. The thermal efficiency of SI process was analyzed using the revised flowsheet.

The very high temperature reactor (VHTR) materials R&D started as an objective of the development of key technologies for a nuclear hydrogen production funded by the Korea government in 2006. We are performing materials R&D for 5 components: a reactor pressure vessel (RPV), a reactor/process intermediate heat exchanger (IHX) and hot gas duct, a control rods component, a reflector and support structures in the core region and reactor materials for the sulfur-iodine (SI) process. The scopes of our works are focused on a material screening/selection and qualification, codifications of a high temperature structural design to a very high temperature region, and to support the licensing of a system design, material characterizations and database establishments. Current target materials are modified 9Cr-1Mo, alloy 617, graphite, ceramic fiber reinforced composite, Fe-Si and SiC.

The program for hydrogen production with high temperature nuclear heat has been launched in Korea since 2004. Iodine sulfur (IS) process is one of the promising processes for a hydrogen production because it does not generate a carbon dioxide and massive hydrogen production may be possible. However, the highly corrosive environment of the process is barrier to the application in the industry. Therefore, corrosion behaviors of various materials were evaluated in sulfuric acid to select appropriate materials compatible with the IS process. The materials used in this work were Ni base alloys, Fe-Si alloys, Ta, Au, Pt, Zr, SiC and so on. The test environments were boiling 50wt% sulfuric acid without/with HI as an impurity and 98wt% sulfuric acid. The surface morphologies and cross sectional areas of the corroded materials were examined by using SEM equipped with EDS. From the results of the weight loss and potentiodynamic experiments, it was found that a Si enriched oxide is attributable to a corrosion resistance for materials including Si in boiling 98wt% sulfuric acid. Moreover the passive Si enriched film thickness increased with the immersion time leading to an enhancement of the corrosion resistance. Corrosion behaviours of the material tested are discussed in terms of the chemical composition of the materials, a corrosion morphology and the surface layer’s composition.

The key interface component between the reactor and chemical systems for the sulfuric acid based processes to make hydrogen is the sulfuric acid decomposition reactor. The materials issues for the decomposition reactor are severe since sulfuric acid must be heated, vaporized and decomposed. SiC has been identified and proven by others to be an acceptable material. However, SiC has a significant design issue when it must be interfaced with metals for connection to the remainder of the process. Westinghouse has developed a design utilizing SiC for the high temperature portions of the reactor that are in contact with the sulfuric acid and polymeric coated steel for low temperature portions. This design is expected to have a reasonable cost for an operating lifetime of 20 years. It can be readily maintained in the field, and is transportable by truck (maximum OD is 4.5 meters). This paper summarizes the detailed engineering design of the Westinghouse Decomposition Reactor and the decomposition reactor’s capital cost.