(75d) Application of Heat from High Temperature Nuclear Reactors for Process Furnaces

Ongoing work to develop, demonstrate and commercialize the next generation of high temperature nuclear reactors points to possible petrochemical plant applications to displace fuel gases used to directly fire furnaces in various hydrocarbon processes. Smaller scale nuclear reactors that produce heat at 750 to 900C via a high pressure helium loop can be integrated with process convective heat exchangers to reduce premium fuel consumption and associated emissions. The enhanced safety characteristics of these nuclear reactors are expected to enable their physical location near to process units, which will be important to minimize the cost of connective high pressure helium piping for heat delivery. A number of traditional direct-fired furnace applications are reviewed which can instead be satisfied by nuclear process heat. Some parametric economics and a review of likely implementation and technology development challenges are also discussed.