Costs competitive large-scale green hydrogen production in North-Africa in 2030

How can a system that produces green hydrogen and ammonia be optimized to minimize the levelized cost and will this system be able to compete with fossil fuel based production in 2030?

Master thesis (2022)

Authors

R.P. Doodeman Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Contributors

A.J.M. van Wijk Energy Technology - Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering (mentor)
Z. Lukszo Energy and Industry (graduation committee member)
A.H.M. Smets Photovoltaic Materials and Devices - EEMCS (graduation committee member)
Frank Wouters (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Copyright: © 2022 Rogier Doodeman
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Published Date

14-04-2022

Language

English

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Abstract

The European Green Deal states that it wants to develop 40 GW of electrolyzer capacity by 2030 in North Africa to combat climate change. Using PV power as the primary energy source, a system is designed that can produce green hydrogen and ammonia to investigate how the location and the capacity of the components can be optimized to produce at the lowest possible levelized costs. This way the competitiveness of green hydrogen and ammonia can be examined against hydrogen and ammonia produced using fossil fuels. Incorporating batteries for electricity storage, a salt cavern for hydrogen storage and cryogenic tanks for nitrogen storage, the system is designed to work as flexible as possible to cope with the variations in PV output.

Scaled to an industrial scale output of 200.000 ton-NH3 per year, the resulting LCOH in 2030 will be 1.63 €/kg-H2, and the LCOA will be 0.394 €/kg-NH3. The competitiveness with fossil fuel-based production is dependent on the price of natural gas, which in this case will need to be higher than 3.16 $/MBTu or 12.25 €/MWh (converted using a USD/EUR rate of 0.88 and a conversion factor of 0.29308 MWh/MBTU, and taking into account a carbon price of 100 €/ton-CO2-eq) for green hydrogen to be competitive. For green ammonia to be cheaper, the gas price must be greater than 4.49 $/MBTu or 17.41 €/MWh.

A sensitivity analysis shows that if the CAPEX and OPEX cost of the five most contributing components to the levelized cost would be 50% higher, the LCOH (2.4770 €/kg-H2) and LCOA (0.5817 €/kg-NH3) would still compare favourably to blue hydrogen and ammonia with a natural gas price of 7.71 $/MBTu (29.89 €/MWh) and 9.04 $/MBTu (35.05 €/MWh). By analyzing the operations of the salt cavern, it is discovered that 6.4% of the salt cavern is used from the available capacity of 3300 ton-H2. Even when the necessary yearly output of ammonia is raised 2 or 4 times, the salt cavern uses only 12.7% and 16.8% of the available capacity. Overall this research shows that green hydrogen and ammonia can compete with hydrogen and ammonia produced from fossil fuels in 2030 and that the possibilities of salt cavern storage for hydrogen are greater than expected because a capacity of 250 ton-H2 is enough for a yearly production of 200.000 ton NH3.