Membrane and desublimation integrated hydrogen separation followed by liquefaction process: An energy, exergy, and economic evaluation

H-2 has gained global attention owing to its clean energy characteristics. As an energy vector, long-term storage and transportation of H-2 in liquid form is essential which requires effective pretreatment. Standalone technologies, such as pressure swing adsorption, membrane, and cryogenic, cannot produce highly pure H-2 with high recovery in an energy-efficient manner. The integration of technologies is a promising alternative to overcome these limitations. In this regard, membrane and cryogenic (desublimation) techniques are integrated to separate H-2 with high purity and recovery. Purified H-2 is liquefied to produce 100% saturated liquid H-2 (LH2). The proposed process is designed in Aspen Hysys v11 and evaluated with respect to energy, exergy, and economic considerations. The results have shown that the proposed process resulted in H-2 separation with 99.99% purity and 95.87% recovery. The total net energy consumption of the proposed integrated process was 11.53 kWh/kg. Exergy analysis revealed that the liquefaction section had the highest specific exergy destruction (similar to 92%). Moreover, the detailed economic calculations showed that the total annualized process cost was 671.6 m$/y. In this study, the potential of membrane-cryogenic integration with LH2 production is evaluated and shown to be fundamental in the development of a sustainable H-2 economy.