An assessment on hydrogen production using central receiver solar systems

An assessment is presented on hydrogen production using a dedicated central receiver solar system concept coupled to two types of hydrogen producing processes, electrolysis and thermochemical. The study on solar electrolytic hydrogen was carried out using solar electricity and four different electrolytic technologies, namely industrial unipolar 1980 and 1983 technologies, industrial bipolar and solid polymer electrolyte technology. The thermochemical process was the sulphur/iodine cycle which is being developed by General Atomic Co. Systems which is capable of producing about 10⁶ GJ hydrogen per year were developed at the conceptual level and site specific computations were carried out. A general mathematical model was developed to predict the optical and thermal performance of the central receiver system coupled directly to the chemical plant. Cost models were developed for each sub-system based on the database published in the literature. Levelized and delevelized costs of solar hydrogen were then computed.