Proposed method for identifying industrial hydrogen demands – Structural basics of a transferable procedure model

Abstract

Numerous studies emphasize the relevance of green hydrogen for defossilizing industrial production. However, green hydrogen remains a costly and scarce commodity. Besides conventional hydrogen production in centralized large-scale chemical factories, so-called green technologies like electrolysis and bio-based hydrogen production enable rather decentralized hydrogen hubs. Such hubs obviate cost-intensive transportation by regionally interlinking supply and demand. Purposeful deployment of confined resources for establishing such infrastructure for green hydrogen production is necessary to achieve greenhouse gas-emission reduction on a long-term system level. For doing so, detailed data concerning geospatial and temporal occurring industrial hydrogen demands is essential. This article provides structural basics of a transferable procedure model for determining such data within variable system boundaries. Therefore, 44 current and potential future industrial hydrogen applications are identified and associated with calculation principles for quantifying location-based demands. The elaboration of a scenario approach based on location-specific influencing factors enables the consideration of regional characteristics and the consequential varying implementation rate of hydrogen technologies. An accompanying calculation tool is provided to enable low-threshold application of the presented procedure model.