Experimental and numerical investigation of sulfuric acid decomposition for hydrogen production via iodine–sulfur cycle

Abstract

In the context of global warming and the greenhouse effect, the iodine–sulfur cycle is an important method of producing hydrogen on a large scale with low carbon emissions using nuclear energy for future applications. The sulfuric acid decomposition reaction is a key step in this process. A sulfuric acid decomposer with good performance usually has the characteristics of high decomposition rate, small pressure drop loss and reasonable temperature distribution, which can ensure the efficient and stable process of sulfuric acid decomposition. Therefore, an accurate evaluation of the performance of the sulfuric acid decomposer unit and the reproducibility of the whole process is of utmost importance for designing and engineering an actual system for hydrogen generation. In this work, two sets of experimental systems were designed to measure the important kinetic parameters of sulfuric acid decomposition reaction and to determine the thermal hydraulics and chemical reaction performance indicators of the system. Then, a multi-field coupling model in which the phase change and chemical reactions were coupled by user-defined functions was developed based on the experimental kinetic parameters to account for the whole process. The thermal–hydraulic characteristics and the chemical reaction indexes predicted by the model are in good agreement with the experimental results. The maximum errors of the sulfuric acid decomposition fraction and pressure drop do not exceed 5% and 10%, respectively. Overall, this work provided a complete model for predicting the performance of the sulfuric acid decomposer.