Thermodynamic Assessment of Solar-Powered Hydrogen Production Using Hybrid Power Cycles

The rise in global energy demand amid growing concerns over climate change from fossil fuel emissions has made decarbonization a necessity. However, some industries are difficult to decarbonize with conventional renewable energy systems. Green hydrogen offers a clean path to decarbonizing these industries, but more than 80% of global hydrogen is not clean. To overcome this, a comparative analysis has been performed between the use of parabolic trough collectors (PTCs) and solar power tower (SPT) for green hydrogen production with the introduction of a novel hybrid cycle. Energy and exergy analysis of different cycle configurations revealed that using three cycles in one configuration did not improve system performance as the best cycle configuration comprised of the modified steam Rankine cycle (MSRC) and organic Rankine cycle (ORC), with a thermal efficiency of 42.36%, solar-to-electricity exergy efficiency of 28.59%, a hydrogen yield of 63.04 kg/h, and a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 20.43%. Parametric analysis revealed that solar collector area and solar irradiation had the greatest impact on total power output and hydrogen production rate.