The integration of SOE with the nuclear steam turbine cycle can be done in various ways. By assuming that hydrogen or oxygen can be separated by using a deaerator and/or a condenser, we can obtain various final pressures of the hydrogen generated. In the chosen cycle, the deaerator operates at pressure of 30 bar. The implementation of O=SOE at stream 15 (see Fig. \ref{727448}) results in 6600 kg/h of hydrogen generation by utilizing 260 MWe. In total, the system operates at 810 MWe with efficiency of 26%, with slightly lower nuclear reactor load, due to the lower amount of live steam resulting from deaerator operation---the mixture of hydrogen and steam is separated in the ratio 62:38. Thus, further post processing is needed to obtain pure hydrogen.
Integration H+SOE with nuclear steam turbine cycle
Generally speaking, H+SOE working principles are based on partial hydrogen pressure differences between the anode and cathode side (see Fig. \ref{437284}), which need to be forced to pass protons from the anode side to the cathode. Hydrogen partial pressure on the cathode side is very low (10-20 MPa) resulting in voltage values with a single cell at a level above 1.2 V.
This results in the water molecule disintegrating into oxygen and hydrogen; the hydrogen being transferred from the steam reach stream to the other side of the solid electrolyte of the solid oxide electrolyzer. This way we can generate quite pure hydrogen (at elevated temperature) and release oxygen into the steam cycle. Thus, we need to consider (i) the influence of the additional oxygen in the steam cycle and (ii) how to cool down and compress the hydrogen obtained.
The first issue is the corrosion caused by the presence of oxygen in the steam; thus H+SOE should be installed close to the deareator, or even integrated with it.