Exergy and separately anergy analysis of a thermochemical nuclear cycle for hydrogen production

In this work the exergy and anergy analysis is applied to the I-S cycle based on a nuclear power for hydrogen production. The exergy losses represent the irreversibility of the process called anergy. The evaluation of anergy is done to both internal anergy (endoanergy) and external anergy (exoanergy) separately for each stage analysed of the S-I process for hydrogen production. The S-I process used as thermal energy source energy from a high temperature nuclear reactor G III and G IV. The separately anergy analysis method is a powerful tool to recognize the internal and external exergy destroyed during a process. With this analysis we found that the overall exergy efficiency of the cycle is rated 37.64%, where the process that generated more anergy is the distillation of aqueous sulphuric acid and the part of the system that generates greater anergy is the exchange of heat between the nuclear fuel rods and helium used in the different processes that require thermal energy. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.