Most carbon is emitted to generate energy and fossil fuels are considered as the main reason of huge amount of carbon emissions. An electric heating system produces heat using electricity by joule heating, and if renewable energy is utilized, carbon emissions can be reduced significantly by replacing fossil fuels. Hence, the high-carbon emitting chemical engineering process can be converted into a low-carbon emitting process by applying an electric heating system. In this work, the electric heating steam methane reforming process is simulated, and its economic and environmental feasibilities are evaluated and compared with the conventionally used fire-based heating steam methane reforming process via techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment. Furthermore, a machine-learning surrogate model is developed which substitutes the simulated process, and this model is used to find out the minimum hydrogen production cost and CO2 emissions through process optimization. Consequently, the optimal feasibilities and process operating conditions are determined with fast response from the integrated machine learning and feasibility assessment models, and this work can provide guidelines for the low-carbon hydrogen production system.
