Thermodynamic Analysis of Thermal Efficiency of HTR-10 Hydrogen Production System

Abstract

This paper presents thermodynamic analysis of the thermal efficiency of the 10 MW high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTR-10) hydrogen production system. The global reaction for the equilibrium reaction model is introduced. An analytical expression for the thermal efficiency is developed using the global reaction. For the specified temperature and pressure the thermal efficiency can be computed with the solution of the equilibrium. The investigation provides a more realistic limit for the efficiency of the nuclear hydrogen production system. The influence of the temperature, latent heat, steam-to-carbon ratio and pressure on the thermal efficiency is analyzed. Varying the temperature there is a maximum thermal efficiency for the specified pressure and steam-to-carbon ratio. The latent heat influences the thermal efficiency significantly, especially at the high temperature condition. Also varying the steam-to-carbon ratio there is a maximum thermal efficiency for the specified pressure and temperature. The process should be operated with high steam-to-carbon ratio to obtain maximum thermal efficiency when the reforming temperature is low and pressure is high. The maximum value is 68.9% within the range of the pressure greater than 1 MPa and steam-to-carbon ratio greater than 2. Comparison of theoretical results to experimental data is carried out.