Systematic Framework for the Techno-Economic Assessment of Green H2 Value Chains

Despite its wide application as a chemical on industrial scale, hydrogen utilization as an energy vector still suffers from unfavourable economics, mainly due to its high cost of production, storage and transportation. To overcome the last two of these issues, different hydrogen carriers have been proposed. Hydrogen storage and transportation through these carriers involve: 1. the conversion of green H2, produced at the loading terminal where renewable sources are easily accessible, to the considered carrier, 2. the storage and transportation of the liquid carrier and 3. its subsequent reconversion to H2 at the unloading terminal. Although there is a number of studies in literature on the economic feasibility of hydrogen transport through different H2 vectors, very few of them delve into the technical evaluation of the hydrogen value chain. From the process design point of view, the conversion and reconversion stages are of paramount importance, considering that they are the cost drivers of the whole system. This work aims to address this gap by presenting a systematic methodology to technically analyse different hydrogen vectors. The systematic framework pointed out can be applied to each H2 carrier considered, in view of assessing opportunities and challenges for each of them.