Techno-economic analysis of recently improved hydrogen production pathway and infrastructure

Abstract

The objective of this study is to identify the techno-economic factors for the recent hydrogen production pathways and their relevant infrastructures so that the costs reported in the recent articles be easily identified for further analysis. The comparison of the levelised cost of hydrogen production (LCOH) from the steam reforming process and renewable electricity-based electrolysis processes has shown that process efficiency improvement, feedstock price and requirement of scaling up of newer investments are the key areas of attention. Very efficient technical development is yet to implement to offer LCOH of less than 2 USD/kg H2 from any of these technologies along with carbon capture and storage (CCS) or scaling up the low-cost renewable electricity facilities. To facilitate rapid growth in development, the LCOH reported by one project can turn into input to another project of the supply chain system through following common standards. Scaling-up is also essential as the industries requiring more than 100 tonnes of H2 per day can be benefited from integrating the solar PV, grid excess electricity and CCS coupled electricity generation from fossil fuels if the identified techno-economic barriers are solved based on the targeted LCOH. Lower LCOH will encourage the end-users to adopt the newer technology for energy production, which will effectively manage the environmental sustainability targets.