(61d) Temporal Intergrated Planning of Design, Shipping Scheduling, and Energy Management System for International Hydrogen Supply Chain

The shift towards a low-carbon economy has prompted increased interest in hydrogen as a clean energy carrier that can replace fossil fuels. Many countries are investing in hydrogen-related policies and infrastructure, and hydrogen research is experiencing a surge in activity. While some countries, such as Korea and Japan, are expected to become major importers of hydrogen due to low potential for renewable energy production, others, such as Saudi Arabia, have vast open land with high potential for renewable energy production and therefore are interested in exporting hydrogen. These countries also have many storage sites for captured CO₂ and thus have viable means to produce large quantities of blue hydrogen. The geographical discrepancies in supply and demand necessitate international cooperation and investment in hydrogen facilities and supply chains, particularly in the development of international hydrogen supply chains that involve the production, transportation, and storage of hydrogen across different countries. However, most research on hydrogen supply chain management (SCM) has focused on a national or regional scale and also did not account for the uncertainty in hydrogen production and demand and the real-time operation of SCM systems.

To solve these challenges, this paper proposes an intertemporal integrated planning framework for the international hydrogen supply chain that considers the uncertainty in hydrogen production and demand, and optimizes the design, scheduling, and energy management decisions in real-time. A two-stage stochastic programming model is formulated to address the uncertainty in both demand and supply sides. For the first stage decision, the model determines the capacity of turbine, PV panel, battery, and hydrogen tanks, water electrolyzer, hydrogen liquefaction plant, and the number of liquid hydrogen ships. Then the operational decisions such as weekly shipping scheduling and hourly energy management are optimally determined for each realized scenario. The proposed methodology accounts for the potential consequences of uncertain events in decision-making and allows for the determination of optimal and robust design, scheduling, and energy management decisions across varying timescales.

The proposed methodology is applied to a case study of the Korea-Saudi hydrogen supply chain, which involves the production of hydrogen in Saudi Arabia and its transportation to South Korea via liquefied hydrogen carriers (LHCs). The framework incorporates various factors that impact the efficiency and sustainability of the supply chain, including the design of LHCs, the scheduling of shipping routes, and the management of energy systems at both the production and consumption sites.