Project Aims to Extract Hydrogen From Nuclear Reactors

SALT LAKE CITY -- If hydrogen created in a nuclear reactor ever winds up fueling cars and homes and businesses decades from now, it might owe all its thanks to a pottery kiln in Salt Lake City.
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A government laboratory and a private electrochemistry have been selected to lead a $2.6 million project to develop hydrogen by high-temperature electrolysis. If successful, their efforts could lead to fuel that could reduce the country's reliance on fossil fuels.

High temperature electrolysis, once thought to be cost prohibitive, could become economically feasible by using the next generation of nuclear reactors to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using electric energy, officials with Ceramatec Inc. and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory said.

"We have been able to show that we can produce hydrogen at commercially attractive rates in a very small unit and at conditions that are typical of a high temperature, helium-cooled reactor," said INEEL researcher Steve Herring.

The sample, about the size of a paperback book, had its successful test in the kiln, used to simulate the high temperatures that would be created in the so-called generation four nuclear reactors, about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

During the test, the sample placed inside the kiln had a paper-thin sheet of ceramic inside it. At the elevated temperatures, oxygen can migrate through the membrane. When an electric voltage is applied, it extracts oxygen from the stream, leaving hydrogen behind.

The oxgyen continues through the membrane and is discharged on the other side.

Researchers said the process of obtaining hydrogen by splitting water using electric energy has been known for about 150 years, but costs in terms of dollars and electric energy made it an unpopular choice.

"High temperature electrolysis has the potential to change that by reducing the amount of electrical energy required and using a proportion of thermal energy in its place," said Joseph Hartvigsen with Ceramatec.

Ceramatec and INEEL will partner with Hoeganaes Corp. in New Jersey and the University of Washington for the project to increase the sample size 100-fold over the next three years.

this article is complete as published by the Daily Olympian, Olympia, WA April 23, 2005

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