Hydrogen Station Compression, Storage, and Dispensing Technical Status and Costs

Abstract

As required by the U.S. Department of Energy contract with the Independent Review Panel, these are the panel's unanimous technical conclusions, arrived at from data collection, document reviews, interviews with industry experts, and panel deliberations from November 2012 through March 2014. All reported compression, storage, and dispensing (CSD) contributions to the cost of hydrogen dispensed at the forecourt include a real 10% internal rate of return on investments and are expressed in 2007 reference-year dollars (2007$). For the central production pipeline scenario, the hydrogen is delivered to the refueling station via pipeline providing an average annual rate of production of 1,000 kg/d. For distributed generation, the hydrogen is produced by steam reforming of natural gas at the forecourt refueling station at a design capacity of 1,330 kg/d annual average rate of production. For the tube-trailer scenario, the hydrogen is delivered as compressed gas at 500 bar via overland tractor trailer to a forecourt refueling station with a design capacity of 850 kg/d annual average rate of delivery. The central production pipeline and forecourt stations sizes (1,000 kg/d and 1,330 kg/d, respectively) were chosen for this analysis because they reflect the station sizes modeled in the U.S. Department of Energy's publicly available cost-evaluation tools: the H2A Forecourt Hydrogen Production Model (H2A) and the Hydrogen Delivery Scenario Analysis Model (HDSAM). The high-pressure tube-trailer station size (850 kg/d) evaluated was the result of the Independent Review Panel's cost-optimization analysis. The Independent Review Panel found that for a high-pressure tube-trailer delivery scenario, an 850-kg/d dispensing station resulted in the lowest cost of dispensed hydrogen based on the delivery technologies most likely to be available and thus represented the best approach toward achieving the U.S. Department of Energy's 2020 dispensed hydrogen cost target for centrally produced hydrogen. The costs reviewed in this report include only those costs contributing to the selling price of hydrogen by the forecourt CSD portion of the hydrogen station and do not include the costs of production or delivery to the station. Conclusions• The current cost of CSD at the forecourt, projected in 2007$ for a mature market (15% penetration of fuel cell vehicles) ranges from $2.00/kg of hydrogen to $2.80/kg of hydrogen for the central production case with delivery via pipeline with a base case 1 of ~$2.40/kg of hydrogen. The wide variance is a result of uncertainties in the cost and 1 The base case, defined in the Panel Results section of this report, is the cost/value that the Independent Review Panel determined is most likely. iv efficiency of the compressor, the cycle life of the vessels used in the high-pressure cascade system, and the station installation costs. These costs were evaluated using the Current Hydrogen Delivery Scenario Analysis Model Version 2.3 (released October 2011).

Dispatchable Hydrogen Production at the Forecourt for Electricity Demand Shaping

“…Figure 1 shows the system design. via existing pipelines is a low-cost option for delivering large volumes of hydrogen; however, the high initial capital costs of new pipeline construction constitute a major barrier to expanding hydrogen pipeline infrastructure [33][34][35]. On-site hydrogen production reduces costs by eliminating the need for transportation.…”

“…In this paper, the capital cost of these components and those of a central electrolyser (which has the same components, but at larger scale), plus fixed costs, were covered by a bank loan with a 0.07% interest rate (ir) over seven years (Y). The costs of forecourt components are extracted from many studies and reports [34,[61][62][63][64] and are given in Table 7 below: The capital cost of the forecourt components are presented in Equations (15) to (20) below.…”

“…Over long distances, trucking liquid hydrogen is more economical than trucking gaseous hydrogen because a liquid tanker can Sustainability 2017, 9, 1785 4 of 22 hold a much larger mass of hydrogen than a gaseous tube trailer. Transporting gaseous hydrogen via existing pipelines is a low-cost option for delivering large volumes of hydrogen; however, the high initial capital costs of new pipeline construction constitute a major barrier to expanding hydrogen pipeline infrastructure [33][34][35].…”

A Stochastic Programming Approach for the Planning and Operation of a Power to Gas Energy Hub with Multiple Energy Recovery Pathways

“…Since the problem optimizes net cost, the value of will most likely going to be a multiple of the maximum capacity of a single tank unit ( ). In this study, tanks with a maximum unit capacity of 45.4 kmol (or ~90 kg) at a maximum storage pressure of 172 bar have been used [32]:…”

“…The lower inventory limit was calculated using the ideal gas equation with compressibility factor of hydrogen used to account for real gas behavior. The lower limit on the tank storage comes from the knowledge that hydrogen withdrawn from storage is sent to a booster compressor unit that can compress gas from 70 bar to 825 bar to complete a refueling cycle for a fuel cell vehicle that has maximum on-board tank storage pressure of 700 bar [32,33].…”