Economic evaluation of a large-scale liquid hydrogen regasification system

One of the main challenges of the hydrogen economy is efficient transportation. The trade of hydrogen can be performed in liquid or gas form. However, long-distance green hydrogen transportation from countries with abundant renewable energy to countries with high hydrogen demand can only be in liquid form (this does not exclude chemical hydrogen carriers, such as ammonia, methanol, etc.). The liquid hydrogen should be at cryogenic temperatures (−252.8 °C) during the transportation. When the liquid hydrogen reaches the import terminal, it must be regasified, similar to liquefied natural gas. The hydrogen regasification from cryogenic to environmental temperature is associated with high energy consumption. This paper presents an economic perspective for a large-scale cogeneration plant for liquid hydrogen regasification. The evaluated configuration consists of three sub-systems. The sub-system that operates at higher temperatures is an open-cycle gas turbine system. The middle sub-system is the closed-cycle gas turbine, where helium is used as the working fluid. The lowest temperature operation is associated with the hydrogen regasification sub-system. The expander of the open-cycle gas turbine accounts for most of the purchased equipment cost, followed by turbomachinery and the hydrogen cryogenic regasifier. The mass flow rate of the regasified liquid hydrogen is assumed to be 16 kg/s. The calculated regasification cost is 0.74 $US/kgH2. Adding the cost of 7.95 $US/kgLH2, the total cost of the regasified green hydrogen, excluding the transport cost, amounts to 8.63 $US/kgH2.