Project motivation

1. Europe and it's member states have committed themselves, in different ways and for different reasons, in ambitious programs for reducing their fossile fuel emissions and their dependence on fossile fuel supplies. In addition, many member states aim to develop hydrogen as an alternative energy carrier for the transport sector.

2. Industrial fertiliser production and refining processes represent and require almost the entire world production of hydrogen today. Hydrogen used as a chemical compound in these cases, is made of fossile sources, usually natural gas (via Steam Methane Reforming).

3. On one hand, hydrogen made from natural gas by SMR has no chance for market penetration and economical viability in the transport sector: SMR is a fossile based process and for transport purposes, the source gas is cheaper when being directly used as fuel.

4. On the other hand, hydrogen made from electrolysis with renewable electricity, be it a fossile-free method, has hardly any technical or economic potential to compete with SMR, due to the limited capacities and economical drawbacks of green electricity.

5. The only promising methods of producing non-fossile based hydrogen on an industrial scale are therefore based on either Steam Electrolysis with nuclear electricity, or thermochemical processes with non-fossile heat from a high temperature nuclear reactor.
These are the only methods followed by the US DOE for the future US hydrogen economy.

6. The thermochemical hydrogen production process can be developed as an independent process (i.e. independent from a nuclear heat source) when using waste heat or other (e.g. from a conventional waste incineration unit). This is an alternative from conventional CHP (hydrogen instead of electricity as a by-product).

7. Apart from the PROMES project in Odeillo, with thermochemical hydrogen processes in the higher temperature ranges (typically 1800°C), and obtained by parabolic solar heat concentration, Europe has no pilot infrastructure for the development of materials and know-how of the iodine sulphur acid cycle in the temperature range around 900°C.

8. The purpose of this project proposal therefore is the development of a pilot plant for thermochemical hydrogen production, considered by amongst others Japan and the US as one of the most promising industrial methods for future fossile free hydrogen.