Thermodynamic analysis of a high-temperature hydrogen production system

Using clean energy sources is considered as a prevention solution for global warming. Hydrogen is one of the most popular clean and renewable fuel which is widely noticed by researchers in different approaches from additive fuel of internal combustion engines to pure feed of fuel cells. Hydrogen production is also one the most interested field of studies and extended efforts are doing to fined high performance, fast and economical ways of its production. In this work, a novel high temperature steam electrolysis system with main solar integrated Brayton cycle core is proposed and numerically simulated to achieve this goal. Energy and exergy analysis having better perception of system performance is done and Rankine and organic Rankine cycles were utilized cooperating with the main core to improve its efficiency. The influences of different parameters such as turbine inlet temperature, inlet heat flux from the sun, compression ratio and also used organic fluid were investigated based first and second laws. Results show the high performance of proposed system, more than 98% energy efficiency of hydrogen production, besides the simplicity of utilizing it.