Producing hydrogen in a cost-effective manner while minimizing environmental impacts is a big challenge. Hydrogen can be generated with carbon as a by-product from thermal decomposition of natural gas. A system using a solar reactor to produce hydrogen on-site for fueling stations was examined for its technical and economic feasibility. Integrated energy and material balance calculations were made to determine the amount of hydrogen that could be produced from a given reactor size and heliostat field area. Hourly solar data were applied to the model to properly estimate real storage requirements. This paper gives the results of the study including the greenhouse gas emissions and energy balance.

Issue Section:
Technical Papers
Keywords:
hydrogen economy, carbon, solar energy concentrators, solar absorber-convertors, fuel, pyrolysis
Topics:
Carbon, Economics , Hydrogen, Natural gas, Solar energy, Carbon black pigments, Storage, Hydrogen production
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