Nuclear Production of Hydrogen, Fourth Information Exchange ...

PROHYTEC, THE FRENCH INDUSTRIAL PLATFORM FOR MASSIVE HYDROGEN PRODUCTION
Introduction
The development of new processes of massive production of hydrogen, to be coupled with energy
sources which do not emit gas with greenhouse effect, such as nuclear and renewable energy sources,
is essential to the deployment of a hydrogen field in Europe in the medium and long term. These new
processes aim to reach a large-scale production, the costs of which would be significantly cheaper
than the basic electrolysis. Classified in majority in the family of the processes functioning at high
temperature (beyond 500°C), these processes still require huge technical and financial efforts to reach
a possible industrial deployment by 2020 (EC, 2007). This deployment would require 1-10 MW
demonstration-scale platforms by 2015. This has encouraged ENEA (Italy), CIEMAT (Spain), DLR
(Germany) and CEA (France) to recently sign a framework agreement on sustainable hydrogen
production “SUSHYPRO” which aims at sharing among themselves their experimental skills and
equipments, for the development of specific R&D and collaboration projects. Complementary to ENEA,
CIEMAT and DLR which are involved in solar production of hydrogen CEA is involved in the R&D on
processes that are coupled with heat supplied by nuclear reactor (Yvon, 2010).
At the same time, a project for a demonstration platform for validating the “production of
hydrogen by high-temperature processes and technologies” (PROHYTEC) has succeeded in obtaining
the financial support of the French authorities of the order of EUR 2 million in 2009. This paper
illustrates the objectives, specifications and foreseen deployment of this platform.
Objectives of PROHYTEC
The PROHYTEC platform aspires to be in the southeast of France the European centre of competences
on massive production of hydrogen by high-temperature processes using nuclear heat. Nevertheless it
is worth mentioning that this platform is obviously open to any international collaboration. In making
available its existing facilities and providing all partners with a high level of skills and experience the
centre of Cadarache of the French atomic energy commission will effectively meet the needs in
industrial qualification of such processes.
In this objective, this platform aims at being:
• Ambitious, i.e. of a sufficient size (power) for guaranteeing the relevancy of the industrial
scaling up and for assessing the technical economics analysis.
• Versatile, i.e. capable of testing different types of components (heat exchangers, electrolysers,
thermochemical cycles) and/or sub and integrated processes in a view of demonstration. This
versatility criterion also denotes the capability for PROHYTEC to be a “plug and play” like facility.
• Modular, i.e. capable of taking into account power requirements not yet established.
The PROHYTEC platform is built up in partnership with local industries involved in H 2 production
and academic laboratories. One of its main purposes is to be a place of fruitful exchanges so as to
create an efficient framework for continuing and graduate educations in these technologies.
Thus, PROHYTEC will represent the French contribution to the technological demonstration
portion of the SUSHYPRO agreement.
The platform governance will rely on a steering committee composed of financial backers and a
scientific board. The steering committee will be responsible for the realisation of the tests operated by
CEA as proprietor of the platform. Particular agreement between members of the governance boards
will have to deal with confidentiality and intellectual property rights.
It is worth noting that these objectives are subject to time constraints due to European and
national H 2 roadmaps which make 2015 a key date, and by PROHYTEC funding which requires the
heat source to be operational by 2011 for preliminary tests of H 2 production by 2013 (see § Schedule).
Specifications
Based on the results of INNOHYP-CA, three high-temperature processes appear to be possibly
demonstrable by 2015, the sulphur-based thermochemical cycles and steam electrolysis.
328 NUCLEAR PRODUCTION OF HYDROGEN – © OECD/NEA 2010