A conceptual design of a dual hydrogen-power generation plant based on the integration of the gas-turbine cycle and copper chlorine thermochemical plant

The CuCl hydrogen production plants are one of the promising hydrogen production plants that have a higher conversion efficiency compared to water electrolyzing system. However, these plant requires a high-temperature source of thermal energy in the order of 530-560 °C. Such high-temperature source of thermal energy is aimed to be provided from the fourth-generation nuclear reactor. Due to a shortage in the technology of the fourth-generation nuclear reactors in developing countries, one alternative to provide such high temperature of thermal energy is the exhaust gasses of gas-turbine stations. In this paper, a conceptual design for dual production cycle of power and hydrogen-based on the integration of gas cycles into the CuCl thermochemical hydrogen plant was examined. The main product of the cycle was supposed to be 130,000 kg per day. However, the gas cycle is the upper cycle of the dual production plant; the electric power was considered as the byproduct of this plant. The aim was to present a conceptual design of the combined plant with the lowest cost of produced hydrogen and highest conversion efficiency, on the one hand, and the highest and cheapest cost of electric power, on the other hand. In this regard, the concept of pinch analysis and multi-objective optimization was conducted. Moreover, a decision-making tool was employed to find the best combination of gas turbines for the configuration of the upstream cycle. Different configurations of the upper gas cycle were examined by 39 types of commercial gas turbine. The final design of the combined plant could generate hydrogen with 51.3% thermal efficiency, 55.2% exergetic efficiency, and the cost of 4.02 $ kg−1. This plant used four gas turbine's model Mitsubishi HI 501 F with 735 MW capacity of electric power generation at the cost of 0.10 $ kWh−1.