The incumbent dominant design for hydrogen production used in refineries in the Netherlands is producing grey hydrogen using steam methane reforming with CO2 as byproduct. Therefore, the current incumbent hydrogen production technology used in refineries in the Netherlands is unsustainable. However, it is still unclear which hydrogen production technology will become the new dominant design during the transition to a sustainable hydrogen feedstock for refineries in the Netherlands. The research objective of this study is to assess which factors influence the success of the competing hydrogen production technologies during the transition to more a sustainable hydrogen feedstock for refineries in the Netherlands and find out which technology is most likely to become the new dominant design. The hydrogen production technologies within the scope of the research are steam methane reforming (SMR) of natural gas (grey hydrogen), SMR with carbon capture and storage (CCS) (blue hydrogen) and electrolysis of water using renewable electricity (green hydrogen).

This research aims to design and analyse possible system configurations for a system in which wind energy from a Dutch wind farm, supplemented with electricity from the grid, is utilized to produce green hydrogen using an electrolyser, including options for transport of hydrogen to the consumer, and to perform an economic analysis on these system configurations. A design is made using MATLAB and Simulink software, for two system sizes; a 10 MW balance of plant system and a 1.4 MW balance of plant system. The design is made for two types of electrolysers, being an alkaline electrolyser and a PEM electrolyser. System configurations are modelled for operations on a minimum load utilizing all available wind energy, and for operations on nominal load continuously. It was found that the alkaline electrolyser is more energy-efficient and cost-efficient than the PEM electrolyser in this system. Including options for transport, it was found that the 10 MW hydrogen production system has the lowest levelized cost of hydrogen and is the most cost-efficient option. When operating on nominal load, the cost of hydrogen was slightly lower than when operating on minimum load using all available wind energy and restricting the use of grid electricity to a minimum. The cost of hydrogen was found to be sensitive to changes in the electricity price as well as changes in capital cost of the electrolyser. The most cost-effective hydrogen production, producing hydrogen at a cost of 2.95 euro per kg, was found to be the 10 MW alkaline system, operating at nominal load.