Hydrogen production using solar heliostat fields: A review

Solar energy as an available and renewable energy has attracted the attention of many scientists. The integration of solar systems with thermochemical cycles and power cycles reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Also, the integration of these cycles with each other will solve problems and optimal use of outputs and increases energy efficiency. Multigenerational systems based on clean energy lead to lower costs and increased efficiency. Also, these multigenerational systems lead to valuable outputs such as electricity and hydrogen with the same input. This article presents a survey of steam Rankine, organic Rankine, Brayton, Kalina cycles and Copper-chlorine, redox, magnesium-chlorine thermochemical cycles to obtain clean hydrogen and emphasizes the advantages and disadvantages as well as the efficiency of these systems. In the above article, the solar heliostat field is highlighted as a renewable and sustainable reference. The obtained results show that renewable systems originating from solar energy significantly reduce hydrogen production costs. Also, hydrogen production using solar energy-based systems is significantly dependent on environmental parameters such as temperature. Accurate setting of these parameters can increase the efficiency of the system. Finally, the above article substantially contributes to the increase of knowledge in the area of hydrogen production using the solar heliostat fields.