(141a) A Framework for Risk Assessment in the Development of Hydrogen-Based Supply Chains

With hydrogen production continuing its advance as a viable alternative in the energy sector to traditional energy resources, it is becoming increasingly more important that safety be integrated into the decisions early in the design process of hydrogen supply chains. Typically, the use of metrics such as hazard indices can be incorporated at the process level in the development of safe production designs to assess the relative inherent hazards and/or risk involved. However, risk assessment through hazard indices does have some shortcomings. First, most of these indices were originally designed to be used in traditional chemical processes such as natural gas processing, chemical manufacturing, etc. Hazard indices need to be able to incorporate new innovations as they are developed, such as those that can be used to supplement the development of hydrogen supply chains like energy storage technologies. Secondly, while there has been some development on risk assessment specifically for hydrogen supply chains, these methods lack the scalability that is incorporated with some of the traditional hazard indices. This could potentially lead to either under or overestimates of the risk levels in the supply chain. Finally, as decisions at the supply chain level are typically complex due to uncertainties, geographic specifications, and time variability, a comparative analysis of the relative risks involved might not be sufficient to determine optimal decisions.

Thus, there needs to be a systematic approach that can be implemented at the supply chain level such that the inherent risks are both quantified and fully minimized. As such, we propose a general framework for risk assessment that can be used not only to assess inherent risk relating to the various process units involved in a similar manner to traditional risk/safety indices, but also can be used to incorporate emerging technologies with an estimated risk assessment. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework, we will examine the hydrogen supply chain network. We will demonstrate how this framework can be used to address the risks involved with emerging technologies such as energy storage and how the risk level can be scaled with capacity.