Identifying the economic potential of waste heat in lowering the unit price of green hydrogen produced via proton exchange membrane electrolysis

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School of Engineering | Master's thesis

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Date

2024-11-18

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Major/Subject

Energy Conversion Processes

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Degree programme

Master's Programme in Advanced Energy Solutions

Language

en

Pages

81

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Abstract

In the race of decarbonising our energy system, hydrogen is one of the proposed solutions for hard-to-abate sectors. There has been growing interest in hydrogen and its derivatives. Various energy agencies have developed projection for global hydrogen demand that far exceeds the current production capacity of low-carbon emissions hydrogen. In addition, the hydrogen that is produced using low-carbon pathways are still expensive and not economically competitive as the fossil fuels alternatives. Hydrogen is targeted to be used in hard-to-abate industries such as marine and aviation. The EU has set the target to achieve 10 million tonne of clean hydrogen production by 2030. The EU has the target to fully decarbonise building stock by 2050. It is estimated that 40% of the EU energy consumption is for buildings, and 80% of those are for heating, cooling and hot water. This master’s thesis investigated the potential recoverable waste heat from hydrogen production via PEM electrolyser. The 20MWe stack size was selected based on the recent projects announced. Process integration methodology was used to match the energy transferrable to the district heating network. The scenarios proposed tested four (4) different heat integrated facility (HIF) configurations assuming different amount of transferrable heat available for the district heating network. The results discovered that despite potential to alleviate the hydrogen production cost, there are constraints. Waste heat recoverable by the district heating network for the cases with the heat exchangers configurations are limited to the district heating network temperature level. While the cases with heat pumps must be valued accordingly due to high investment costs. In all cases, electricity price was discovered as a key bottleneck as the heat integration facility is also using electricity. Future studies are needed that could optimise the heat integration facility, oxygen sales and the future of district cooling.

Description

Supervisor

Keppo, Ilkka

Thesis advisor

Keppo, Ilkka

Keywords

PEM electrolyser, district heating, waste heat, levelised cost of hydrogen, levelised cost of heat, heat integration

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Permanent link to this item

https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202412137749

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[dipl] Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu / ENG