A new carbon-negative hydrogen production cycle for better sustainability

Carbon dioxide removal is considered by many as an essential piece to achieve global net zero targets which was also mentioned by the third working group of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. On top of this, green hydrogen is badly needed to achive carbon-free society long-term sustainability. This study proposes a new five-step sodium hydroxide thermochemical cycle for simultaneous hydrogen production and carbon dioxide removal, which is driven by the heat at least 400 °C. The proposed integrated cycle can be driven by clean energy sources that can be utilized to generate heat at required temperatures. The proposed system is designed and analyzed by using energy and exergy approaches of thermodynamics. A case study is also developed in order to understand the effects of changing parameters on system performance. A thermochemical hydrogen production cycle is designed with an unequilibrium reaction where the respective heat capacity calculation models are employed. According to the calculations, more than half of the energy content of process heat can be converted into hydrogen, where maximum energy and exergy efficiencies of the thermochemical cycle are found as 50.05% and 76.61% when the separation reaction is carried out at 400 °C. According to the case study results, a parabolic trough collector type concentrated solar energy system with 295 kW of heat sink capacity, can generate 5216.65 kg of hydrogen and capture 19,991.97 kg of carbon dioxide in a location where 1500.11 kWh of solar energy is reached per m² of area in a typical year.