Techno-economic assessment of physical-based hydrogen storage technologies: An efficient refrigeration management

Abstract

The physical-based storage of hydrogen as compressed gas or as a liquid has many advantages over material-based methods that may require advanced storage materials, different charge/discharge rates, etc. However, its high-energy demand is an important issue that should be addressed. The aim of this work is to evaluate the techno-economic process performance indices such as energy density and Specific Energy Consumption (SEC) of Cryogenic Compressed H₂ (CCH₂) over conventional Liquid H₂ (LH₂), and Compressed Gas H₂ (CGH₂) storage at convenient state conditions. The result infers that at CCH₂ storage conditions, higher hydrogen density (≈ 90 kg/m³ ) was obtained at 53 K and 700 bar with SEC value of 39 kW/kg. While for LH₂ ≈ 66 kg/m³ at 3 bar and 20 K with a SEC of 45 kW/kg, and CGH₂ ≈ 40.5 kg/m³ at 700 bar and 300 K with SEC of 35.5 kJ/kg.s. The hydrogen storage densities could be doubled from 40kg/m³ at 700 bar and 300 K using CGH₂ to 80 kg/m³ at ≈38K using CCH₂, but with only 300 bar. Hence, these optimal points could be viable options for the demands of different applications: hydrogen-refueling stations, distribution networks and transport for long distance, with a certain tradeoff between SEC and energy density.