A Techno-Economic Evaluation Of The Green Liquid Hydrogen Supply Chain

Abstract

Since the European Commission concluded that green hydrogen is a key priority in the achievement of Europe’s energy transition, hydrogen is included in transition strategies of many parties. The Netherlands has the ambition to become the European leader of hydrogen deployment within their strategy. The oversea import of hydrogen is highly needed in the future, as it is expected that NW-Europe does not have sufficient renewable energy sources to locally produce the entire hydrogen demand. Due to the extensive gas network and distribution infrastructure, the strategic location of Rotterdam has the potential to become the new hydrogen energy import hub of Europe. As Vopak, world’s leading independent tank storage company, sees opportunities in the large scale import and storage of hydrogen, an evaluation of the entire green liquid hydrogen supply chain is done. In this paper, an evaluation of the green liquid hydrogen supply chain is presented. The literature review of the individual elements led to the construction of the supply chain existing of the consecutive elements: renewable energy generation, electrolyser technology, liquefaction plant, onshore storage, oversea shipping, onshore storage, distribution of hydrogen and consumption by end-users. Within this supply chain, liquid
hydrogen is taken into account due to its favorable volumetric density of 70.8kg/m3. This results in the handling and storage of hydrogen at cryogenic conditions: 20K at a pressure of 1.1 bar. The scope of the project is determined to be from the liquefaction plant to the distribution of the hydrogen into the different transportation modes on the importing terminal. A technical and economic model is created in order to analyse different throughput scenarios. These scenarios transport the hydrogen from a country X in which abundant renewable feedstocks are expected to be produced to the importing location of Rotterdam. By creating and merging a technical and economic model, an in-depth research is conducted. The model determines optimized configurations and their sensitivity for certain throughput scenarios. The technical research led to the following findings: 1. The storage tank has an expected maximal spherical capacity of 40 000m3 with an according BOR of 0.043%/day. If higher capacities are required, the shape
of the tank shifts towards cylindrical structures, due to the vacuum insulation technique. Whenever this capacity is increased, the currently used technology of vacuum MLI is expected to shift towards membrane technology. This is due to that vacuum insulation is not applicable to flat surfaces unless a very thick inner wall is constructed. The exact technology and according BOR of membrane technology is highly proprietary. 2. The liquefaction plant is a mature technology of which the capacity can be easily increased. The current largest plant capacities can be increased from 50tpd to 500tpd, due to easily transportable cold boxes. The current energy consumption of 8kWh/kg can presumably decreased to around 6kWh/kg. Although the minimum capacity of a plant is 20%, the energy consumption is heavily affected. 3. The first oversea LH2 vessel, with a capacity of 1250m3, is currently in its sea trials. Concept designs and interviews led to the perspective that a LH2 vessel of 100 000m3 can be expected in the year 2030. 4. The BOP systems do not exist on industrial scale. Although the handling systems do not exist, the transfer loss during a transfer of a parcel is estimated to be 1.5%. 5. The energy consumption throughout the supply chain shows that the liquefaction plant plays a dominant role. The second most energy intensive process is the oversea shipping. The economic simulations led to the following findings: 1. The LCOH in Rotterdam can decrease to 2.78USD/ kg when a throughput scenario of 3.5Mt/year from the location of Saudi Arabia is realised. 2. The competitiveness tipping point (3.15USD/kg) from the location of Morocco and Saudi Arabia is around 0.35Mt/year. 3. Australia does not reach an economically attractive liquid hydrogen oversea supply chain to Europe, unless the demand highly increases. 4. In small throughput scenarios the storage tank has the most dominant impact on the LCOH. This is due to that the liquefaction plant and ship are scalable to a single unit, while the storage tank has a minimum of three tanks per terminal. The combination of the technical and economic results led to an overall conclusion that a green liquid hydrogen supply chain is economically competitive at a throughput scenario of 0.31Mt/year from Morocco. Although the technical elements within this scenario are currently still in concept phase, expectations look very promising and can be deployed by 2030. Further BOP and handling systems are not yet commercially available, similar expectations are set for the year 2030. Whenever the hydrogen demand in NW-Europe increases, an acceleration of the oversea hydrogen deployment is established. Therefore further research needs to keep a close eye on the technical development of the supply chain.