The project's goal is to provide a feasible design of an integrated energy system to use a nuclear power plant to produce hydrogen. This will help to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the future by replacing fossil fuel sources with hydrogen, a clean burning fuel. This motivates our team to work toward a clean energy future with nuclear at its heart.
Team: Jake Weidman, Drew Voli, Ethan Yuan
Project Advisors: Prof. Wei Ji ,Kyle Warns
Members of the design group
Project Motivation
The project's goal is to provide a feasible design of an integrated energy system to use a nuclear power plant to produce hydrogen. This will help to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the future by replacing fossil fuel sources with hydrogen, a clean burning fuel. This motivates our team to work toward a clean energy future with nuclear at its heart.
Screenshots of high-level views of the models showing the hydrogen plant (left) and nuclear plant (right)
Project Description
The project's purpose was to design a combined nuclear and chemical production plant. The designing was done using Dymola, a modeling software that can simulate the dynamic behavior of the integrated plant. Our team then analyzed the model to figure out chemical yield, efficiency, and other reactor and chemical production parameters. Further, our team has decided to pursue the integration of a small module reactor (SMR) and hydrogen production plant, as SMRs are nearing operational status and will become commercialized in the next few decades.
A high-level view of the linked system. The Combined Electrolysis block contains all modeled parts of the hydrogen plant while the BOP block contains all modeled parts of the nuclear plant
Results and Accomplishments
The main accomplishments of the project are working models of an integrated nuclear and hydrogen plant that can be modified to study how changes in one plant affect the other. Through the model, the integrated system was modified to see how different changes would affect plant operation. Some changes made were loss of steam, increased preheating and increased distance between the nuclear and hydrogen plant.