Industrial heat recovery from a steel furnace for the cogeneration of electricity and hydrogen with the copper-chlorine cycle

A novel integrated system for the production of hydrogen at a high pressure utilizing steel furnace waste heat is presented and analyzed in this paper. The system utilizes a hybrid thermochemical copper-chlorine (Cu-Cl) cycle. This study integrates the industrial waste heat source with the thermochemical Cu-Cl cycle combined with a hydrogen compression system. The electrical energy required by the system is provided by a supporting Rankine cycle. The hydrogen compression system compresses hydrogen to a pressure of 750 bars. The integrated system is simulated with Aspen Plus software. Energy and exergy analyses are performed for the integrated system. Results from the simulations are presented and discussed. The overall energy efficiency is 38.2% and overall exergy efficiency is found to be 39.8%.