LAUSR

Abstract The use of nuclear reactors is a large studied possible solution for thermochemical water splitting cycles. Nevertheless, there are several problems that have to be solved. One of them is to increase the efficiency of the cycles. Hence, in this paper, a thermal energy optimization of a Sulfur-Iodine nuclear hydrogen production cycle was performed by means a heuristic method with the aim of minimizing the energy targets of the heat exchanger network at different minimum temperature differences. With this method, four different heat exchanger networks are proposed. A reduction of the energy requirements for cooling and heating was achieved, being around 59.35% for cooling and 52.95% for heating in average, compared to the reference design with no heat exchanger network. With this reduction, the thermal efficiency of the cycle increased in about 10% in average compared to the reference efficiency. This improves the use of thermal energy of the cycle.