Analytical and experimental investigation of thermal efficiency improvement of thermochemical water splitting for hydrogen production

This paper examines heat recovery in a thermochemical Cu-Cl cycle for efficient hydrogen production. It is essential to recover heat within the Cu-Cl cycle to improve the overall thermal efficiency of the cycle. A major portion of heat recovery can be achieved by cooling and solidifying the molten salt exiting an oxygen reactor. Heat recovery from the molten salt is achieved by dispersing the molten stream into droplets. In this paper, an analytical study and experimental investigation of the thermal phenomena of a falling droplet quenched into water is presented, involving the droplet surface temperature during descent and resulting composition change in the quench process. The results show it is feasible to quench the molten salt droplets for an efficient heat recovery process without introducing any material imbalance for the overall cycle integration.