Erzeugung von flüssigen Kohlenwasserstoffen unter Einsatz von Kernenergie

In the future, the global demand on liquid hydrocarbons especially for the traffic sector will still increase. To supply the world market with adequate volumes will necessitate the application of alternatively generated fuels in a few decades already. Besides conventional generation processes, where the necessary process heat comes from the combustion of part of the products, the use of nuclear heat is possible to cover the process energy demand. This heat is required in form of steam, electricity and high temperature heat. Using these techniques the following processes can be attractive: steam flooding of oil deposits, the oil recovery from oil sands and oil shales, the methanol production from natural gas, the coal hydrogenation as well as the production of methanol from biomass. Normally, the volume of recoverable light hydrocarbons can be doubled by applying nuclear energy. The CO$_{2}$ emissions during the production process can be avoided and the production costs can be decreased compared to current oil prices. The necessary conversion technologies are well-known and proven in industrial use, some of them for a long-time. The modular high-temperature reactor can be used as a nuclear heat source. This kind of heat source will be sized around 200 MW$_{th}$, if a cylindrical core is used. Under these conditions even for a complete loss of the core cooling neither improper overheating of the fuel elements nor a core melt-down can occur. Therefore the retention of radioactive material in the reactor system is assured even for severe accidents. Using an annular core the power can be increased up to 400 MW$_{th}$ while the system maintains the mentioned safety properties. The nuclear heat is integrated into the process by steam generator, helium heated steam reformer for the steam reforming reaction and by helium-helium heat exchangers. The high-temperature heat exchangers are tested in permanent operation for helium temperatures of 950°C and for powers of 10 MW$_{th}$. An extrapolation to commercially necessary sizes of 100 MW$_{th}$ is considered to be reliable. The mentioned processes can be seen as technically feasible on the basis of previous projects, especially of extensive programs for high-temperature materials