Synergistic energy solutions: Solar chimney and nuclear power plant integration for sustainable green hydrogen, electricity, and water production

Abstract

Globally, countries are strategically devising and implementing plans for hydrogen production, recognizing its status as the future's primary energy fuel. This study, conducted in Irbid, Jordan, serves as a case study focusing on producing green hydrogen by integrating a Solar Chimney Power Plant (SCPP) with a nuclear power plant (NPP). The innovative design of the proposed SCPP involves the incorporation of a water pool and an electrolyzer station, facilitating the production of desalinated water, green hydrogen, and oxygen, and leveraging the excess waste heat generated by the NPP to enhance the overall system performance. The proposed integration directly routes the excess hot air from the NPP tower into the SCPP's collector to enhance the temperature profile under the collector and the air velocity, boosting electricity and water production. This integration demonstrated a significant improvement over the conventional SCPP. Specifically, the SCPP+ NPP system produced 716 MWh/year, surpassing the traditional SCPP's output of 362 MWh/year. Furthermore, the proposed design exhibited substantial gains in freshwater production, yielding approximately 260,000 tons/year compared to the conventional SCPP's 140,000 tons/year. Ratio analysis indicates a positive correlation between integrated electricity generation and water output, emphasizing the sustained improvement in water production (average ratio ∼1.88) in the SCPP+NPP system. The proposed SCPP+NPP not only doubled its green hydrogen output, reaching 25 tons/year compared to the conventional SCPP's 13 tons/year, but also contributed a substantial 200 tons/year of oxygen, surpassing the traditional SCPP's 100 tons/year. The results underscored the superior performance of the proposed SCPP+ NPP across various metrics—hydrogen production, electricity generation, freshwater yield, and oxygen output—exhibiting a twofold improvement over the conventional SCPP. Consequently, implementing the integration between SCPP and NPP, emerges as a promising and viable solution for green hydrogen production in Jordan.