Thermo-economic and thermo-environmental assessment of hydrogen production, an experimental study

Abstract

Nowdays, the topic involvement of green hydrogen in energy transformation is getting attention in the world. The current research examined, thermo-economic and thermo-environmental analyses of the organic Rankine cycle (ORC) system and the hydrogen production system integrated into the solar collector with medium temperature density are investigated. The presented study is a holistic evaluation of experimentally solar-assisted electricity and hydrogen production. The studied model is comprised of an evacuated tube solar collector for thermal energy generation, ORC system for electricity generation and proton exchanger membrane electrolyzer (PEMe) for hydrogen production. According to the results of the thermodynamic analysis, the energy and exergy efficiency of the whole system are calculated as 39.01% and 17.37%, respectively. Also exergoenviroeconomic and exergoenviromental analysis of the whole system is found as 71.48 kgCO2/kWh and 0.139 $/kgCO2, respectively. In addition, the sustainability index of the presented system is obtained as 1.21. In this study, in addition to thermodynamic analysis, parameters such as energy and exergy affecting environmental and economic efficiency, are explained. Ambient temperature plays a prominent role in energy-based environmental analysis. On the contrary, the ambient temperature did not cause a significant change in the exergy-based environmental analysis.