Thursday, September 18, 2008

INL Nuclear Hydrogen Update

A team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory earlier this month reached a major milestone with the successful production of hydrogen through High-Temperature Electrolysis (HTE).

The milestone was reached when the Integrated Laboratory Scale experiment started producing hydrogen at a rate of 5.6 cubic meters per hour.

The achievement was recognized at a media event in Idaho Falls Sept. 18.

"This is by far the biggest achievement we've had," said Carl Stoots, the experiment's principal investigator.

High-Temperature Electrolysis is a system of producing hydrogen very efficiently by using technology originally developed for solid oxide fuel cells. HTE is a significant improvement over the more conventional methods to produce hydrogen. HTE uses an electric current through water to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen. Combined with a clean power source such as a next-generation nuclear plant, HTE could produce hydrogen at 45 to 55 percent efficiency.

Some idle thoughts. I wonder what the drawbacks would be to attach this sort of set-up to most of our nuclear reactors would be? 5.6 cubic meters/hour is not that impressive, but it is a scale up from the previous lab tests. I wonder what the limits are?

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