Techno-Economic Analysis of Hydrogen–Natural Gas Blended Fuels for 400 MW Combined Cycle Power Plants (CCPPs)

Abstract

Various research and development activities are being conducted to use hydrogen, an environmentally friendly fuel, to achieve carbon neutrality. Using natural gas–hydrogen blends has advantages such as the usage of traditional combined cycle power plant (CCPP) technology and existing natural gas piping infrastructure. Therefore, we conducted CCPP process modeling and economic analysis based on natural gas–hydrogen blends. For process analysis, we developed a process model for a 400 MW natural gas CCPP using ASPEN HYSYS and confirmed an error within the 1% range through operation data validation. For economic analysis, we comparatively reviewed the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of CCPPs using hydrogen blended up to 0.5 mole fraction. For LCOE sensitivity analysis, we used fuel cost, capital expenditures, capacity factor, and power generation as variables. LCOE is 109.15 KRW/kWh when the hydrogen fuel price is 2000 KRW/kg and the hydrogen mole fraction is increased to 0.5, a 5% increase from the 103.9 KRW/kWh of CCPPs that use only natural gas. Economic feasibility at the level of 100% natural gas CCPPs is possible by reducing capital expenditures (CAPEX) by at least 20%, but net output should be increased by at least 5% (20.47 MW) when considering only performance improvement.