The principal objective of HYDROSOL‐PLANT (SP1-JTI-FCH.2012.2.5/ Contract No:325361) is the development and operation of a plant for solar thermo‐chemical hydrogen production from water in a 750 kW_th scale on a solar tower, based on the HYDROSOL technology. This technology was developed through the predecessor Projects HYDROSOL and HYDROSOL‐II that introduced the concept of multi‐channelled honeycomb monolithic solar reactors for hydrogen generation from water splitting via redox‐pair‐based thermochemical cycles and demonstrated the feasibility of this process for long‐term, cyclic hydrogen production at the level of a pilot plant in a 100 kWth scale.

Such a pilot reactor has been installed on the solar tower facility of Plataforma Solar de Almeria (PSA) in Spain, showing that hydrogen production is possible on a solar tower under realistic conditions and demonstrating the high potential of the particular thermochemical cycle technology for further scale‐up. Relevant activities necessary to prepare the erection of a HYDROSOL‐technology based solar demonstration plant of the scale of 1 MWth have been addressed through project HYDROSOL‐3D (FCH‐JU‐2008‐1 Call, Contract No: 245224). An example of such activities includes the complete pre‐design and design of the whole plant, the solar hydrogen reactor and all necessary upstream and downstream units needed to feed in the reactants and separate the products and the calculation of the necessary plant erection and hydrogen supply costs.

In this respect, the HYDROSOL‐PLANT consortium will capitalize on the experience gained in the HYDROSOL group of projects and mainly on the outcome of the completed FCH-JU co-funded project, HYDROSOL-3D, to develop, verify and operate all of the tools required to scale up solar H2O splitting to the pilot (750 kWth) scale. 

http://www.hydrosol-plant.certh.gr