(648f) Green H2 Fuel for Industry and Maritime Sector Decarbonization: Impacts on Hydrogen Economy for Qatar

Hydrogen (H2) produced from green energy sources or low carbon technologies presents a promising future for a country like Qatar to decarbonize its multiple sectors including transportation, shipping, global energy markets and industrial sectors (Eljack and Kazi, 2021). This can reduce the negative impacts on climate by reducing the global greenhouse gas emissions and can act as a flexible energy carrier. Maritime shipping industry is currently facing intense pressure to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which accounts for 7-8% of the global GHG emissions (Atilhan et al., 2021). The International Maritime Organization (IMO), a United Nations agency, has set targets to reduce its greenhouse gas emission by 50% in 2050 compared to the 2018 baseline emissions to align the industry with the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement (COP21) (Eljack and Kazi, 2021). In order to achieve these targets, they mandated a shift from dependence on fossil fuels to an energy mix in the shipping sector that includes low carbon emitting fuels. Green hydrogen could play a crucial role in the maritime industry’s journey towards decarbonization. Produced through electrolysis, H2 is free of carbon emissions and could be widely available across the globe in the future – as a marine fuel or a key enabler for synthetic fuels. Many in shipping recognize hydrogen’s potential, but one of the key barriers to implement green H2 fuel is the cost of production, which can be reduced by enhancing the industrial circular economy, especially increasing the usage of waste streams (e.g., waste heat and water) to produce green hydrogen. However, there are still other barriers to the realization of a hydrogen-based economy, which includes infrastructure investments, bulk storage, transport & distribution, safety consideration, and matching supply-demand uncertainties (Kazi et al., 2020). This work presents the strategic approach to these difficulties through a multisectoral industrial-marine sector synergy for the deployment of the hydrogen economy for Qatar.

This study focuses on the development of a strategic framework for the design of a hydrogen supply chain network (HSCN) mainly investigating the potential of decarbonizing industrial and maritime sector via green hydrogen economy with an evaluation of production routes, techno-economic performance, storage, and transportation of the green H2 fuel. Benchmarking is also carried out compared to existing green production routes specific to industrial decarbonization, which was previously accomplished by the group (Kazi et al., 2020). The problem was formulated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) and solved in GAMS/ IBM ILOG CPLEX 30.3.0 solver. Future demand scenario of the shipping fuel was predicted using an artificial neural network (ANN) based prediction model developed in TensorFlow backend using the Keras library in Python utilizing the global historical maritime data ranging from 1980 to 2020, which were obtained from the database of united nations conference on trade and development (UNCTADSTAT). The applicability of the developed model was demonstrated using a base case Eco-industrial city consisting of 10 diverse industrial portfolios targeting decarbonization of the shipping sector by 5%. The solution was able to find the optimal HSCN from the probable superstructure along with the optimal sizing of green hydrogen production, optimal water sources, optimal sinks and the optimal amount of byproducts generation. Furthermore, the multi-purpose model can accomplish detailed techno-economic-environmental analysis for variable scenarios (e.g., variation in decarbonization target, green H2 fuel demand, hydrogen storage locations, variation in transportation cost, earnings from byproducts) based on net present value to identify the key policy changes to promote green H2 as the shipping fuel. The concept and the formulation presented in this work will act as the building block for future complex hydrogen supply chain problems.

References

Atilhan, S., Park, S., El-Halwagi, M.M., Atilhan, M., Moore, M., and Nielsen, R.B. (2021). Green hydrogen as an alternative fuel for the shipping industry. Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 31, 100668. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coche.2020.100668.

Eljack, F., and Kazi, M.-K. (2021). Prospects and Challenges of Green Hydrogen Economy via Multi-Sector Global Symbiosis in Qatar. 1(14). doi: 10.3389/frsus.2020.612762.

Kazi, M.-K., Eljack, F., El-Halwagi, M.M., and Haouari, M. (2020). Green hydrogen for industrial sector decarbonization: Costs and impacts on hydrogen economy in qatar. Computers & Chemical Engineering, 107144. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2020.107144.