Nuclear Production of Hydrogen, Fourth Information Exchange ...

PROHYTEC, THE FRENCH INDUSTRIAL PLATFORM FOR MASSIVE HYDROGEN PRODUCTION
Schematic illustration of the heat source and process part of PROHYTEC
distribution do not usually stand these temperatures. In the same way the superheater must be
carefully designed when using heating rods since the thermal power dissipated in this component is
about 0.1 MW and even higher during the transient phase of heating up.
Dehydration of the exhaust gases is also of crucial importance not only from technical economics
considerations (H 2 O recycling) but also for operational reasons since the gas mass flow meters do not
stand any humidity. For the moment the management of the produced H 2 is still under debate: either
burnt or recycled in a PEMFC coupled to the electrical grid or used for qualifying another process or
stored…. In a pragmatic manner, the short term objective of H 2 production by 2013 requires to
conduct the safety studies on the simpler option that will be available at that time.
For a 1 thermal MW considered for the steam generator, first process simulations lead to H 2 and
O 2 mass flow rates respectively of the order of 90 kg/h and 730 kg/h. The water mass flow rate
required is about 820 kg/h. It is worth mentioning that this 1 thermal MW objective will depend on the
availability of corresponding stacks of electrolysers. If only a few hundreds of kW stacks could be
tested by 2013, PROHYTEC is designed to function at this lower power.
Implementation
PROHYTEC is located inside the CEA Cadarache Centre and thus benefit from many advantages:
• Available electrical power of 3.3 MW potentially increasable to 7.8 MW in a few years.
• Available facilities including demineralised water treatment unit and storage capacity. The
capacity of production of demineralised water is about 10 tonnes/h continuously during
6 hours before stopping during a few hours.
• Available H 2 safety lines in Building 704 due to passed qualification experiments of H 2
catalytic traps, pumps, valves… of PWR under accidental conditions.
330 NUCLEAR PRODUCTION OF HYDROGEN – © OECD/NEA 2010