2025 Spring Meeting and 21st Global Congress on Process Safety

(36c) Optimal Design and Strategic Planning of Hydrogen Production, Transport, and Storage Infrastructure

Authors

Dauda Ibrahim - Presenter, Imperial College London
Nilay Shah, Imperial College London
The increased concern over climate change and the gradual depletion of fossil fuel have led to the search for alternative sources of energy that are both renewable and sustainable. Hydrogen, derived from renewable sources such as water, have been used in the transport sector (e.g., road transport) to decarbonize the sector. Transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions requires the decarbonization of sectors such as industry, maritime, power and heat, in addition to transport. To facilitate transition to net-zero, the UK government have put in place policies that support the development of hydrogen production delivery road map as well as strategic planning and efficient, cost-effective and timely roll-out of hydrogen transport and storage infrastructure.

This work proposes a systematic framework for optimal design and strategic planning of hydrogen production, transport, and storage infrastructure, supporting both regional and nation-wide decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors, e.g., industry, road transport, maritime, heat and power. Here, a mixed integer linear programming model is built for an entire energy system, comprising essential components such as resources, production technologies, transportation technologies, and storage technologies. The model inputs include spatially and temporally discretized demand of hydrogen at various end-user locations, capacities of hydrogen and carbon dioxide storage sites, distance between locations, maximum flow limits of pipe types, technical parameters of hydrogen production technologies, and economic data of storage, transport, and production technologies. The model aims at optimizing inventory of resources, flow of resources between locations, hydrogen production rate, import of resources, and network structure over a planning horizon, i.e., both short- and long-terms. The overall objective is to minimize total system cost (sum of investment cost and operating cost) while satisfying hydrogen demand at end-user locations (industrial clusters, power plants, etc.).

The capability of the proposed systematic framework is demonstrated using a real-world case study concerned with transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by using green and blue hydrogen to decarbonize industry, transport, heat and power sectors in the UK. Outcome from this study can be used by government and policymakers to (i) set-out roadmap for both short-term and long-term deployment of hydrogen production, transport and storage infrastructure, (ii) assess various hydrogen production technology options and financial planning, and (iii) understand and assess UK readiness to achieve planned transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emission by 2050.