Syngas production requires high temperature. 300 C is way, way, way too cold
Even the high temperature nuclear reactors running at 900 C are not hot enough. You can't fix it with better catalysts - the high temperature is required because the chemical equilibrium is not favorable until you reach a process temperature of about 1000 C, requiring a heat source of about 1200 C. That's still a country mile from what you can reach with electricity or any of "high temperature" nuke designs that are 20 years off anyway. The only way to get there at the massive industrial scale required is with fossil fuel combustion. I have engaged with the various nuke promoters and asked them how they intend to bridge this gap. Their explanations for how they will supposedly do so were risible.
You're right! We have only one choice for now and and as far as can be seen into the future: producing hydrogen from fossil fuels. Electrolysis was, say 100 years ago, the only way to produce it and so, very little was produced. Thermochemical production from fossil fuels costs about 1/10 as much and so now we produce a great deal of it, beginning in the 1920s, all from fossil fuels. You do realize hydrogen has been and is being produced at massive industrial scale from fossil fuels for 100 years, right? This green hydrogen nonsense is not happening, will never happen, and cannot happen. It's simple thermodynamics.
Syngas production requires high temperature. 300 C is way, way, way too cold
Even the high temperature nuclear reactors running at 900 C are not hot enough. You can't fix it with better catalysts - the high temperature is required because the chemical equilibrium is not favorable until you reach a process temperature of about 1000 C, requiring a heat source of about 1200 C. That's still a country mile from what you can reach with electricity or any of "high temperature" nuke designs that are 20 years off anyway. The only way to get there at the massive industrial scale required is with fossil fuel combustion. I have engaged with the various nuke promoters and asked them how they intend to bridge this gap. Their explanations for how they will supposedly do so were risible.
If we want syngas from nuclear energy, we will put a stream of CO2 and (nuclear supplied) steam into a solid oxide electolyser...
I spent a year studying making syngas from a nuke. It won't work. Not in our lifetimes at least. It would take me 10,000 words to explain it.
You're right! We have only one choice for now and and as far as can be seen into the future: producing hydrogen from fossil fuels. Electrolysis was, say 100 years ago, the only way to produce it and so, very little was produced. Thermochemical production from fossil fuels costs about 1/10 as much and so now we produce a great deal of it, beginning in the 1920s, all from fossil fuels. You do realize hydrogen has been and is being produced at massive industrial scale from fossil fuels for 100 years, right? This green hydrogen nonsense is not happening, will never happen, and cannot happen. It's simple thermodynamics.
And producing hydrogen by electrolysis of water? Someone (I wish it was me) rightly called that process "a thermodynamic obscenity."
Using hydrogen for energy is a complex and mostly uneconomic proposition.
But if we need the chemcial aspects of hydrogen, we don't have much real choice...