ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2026
Nuclear Technology
March 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Fusion research tackles fuel and instrumentation challenges
Three research groups are reporting fusion-related developments, including ongoing work toward spin-polarized fusion, a new plasma diagnostic tool heading to the National Ignition Facility, and a materials science project that could impact the design of inertial confinement fusion fuel targets.
Nicholas R. Brown, Seungmin Oh, Shripad T. Revankar, Karen Vierow, Salvador Rodriguez, Randall Cole, Jr., Randall Gauntt
Nuclear Technology | Volume 167 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 95-106
Technical Paper | NURETH-12 / Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A8854
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The sulfur-iodine (SI) cycle is one of the leading candidates in thermochemical processes for hydrogen production. In this paper a simplified model for the SI cycle is developed with chemical kinetics models of the three main SI reactions: the Bunsen reaction, sulfuric acid decomposition, and hydriodic acid decomposition. Each reaction was modeled with a single control volume reaction chamber. The simplified model uses basic heat and mass balance for each of the main three reactions. For sulfuric acid decomposition and hydriodic acid decomposition, reaction heat, latent heat, and sensible heat were considered. Since the Bunsen reaction is exothermic and its overall energy contribution is small, its heat energy is neglected. However, the input and output streams from the Bunsen reaction are accounted for in balancing the total stream mass flow rates from the SI cycle. The heat transfer between the reactor coolant (in this case helium) and the chemical reaction chamber was modeled with transient energy balance equations. The steady-state and transient behavior of the coupled system is studied with the model, and the results of the study are presented. It was determined from the study that the hydriodic acid decomposition step is the rate-limiting step of the entire SI cycle.