Colloquia

Summary

The Netherlands is phasing out natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is seeking to implement hydrogen into the current gas infrastructure as replacement. Hydrogen can be produced sustainably with electrolysis using sustainable energy sources which are required to meet the mandatory demand set by the European Union. Currently less than 1% of all hydrogen worldwide is produced with low-emission technologies. This thesis compares two green hydrogen electrolysis facilities placed in the Netherlands and Chile based on a technical, environmental, and economical analysis. The goal was to compare whether a more favourable location for solar energy harvesting could be more beneficial than a domestic facility based on the aforementioned analyses. The Dutch hydrogen facility exits out of a PEM electrolyser with PV-panels and batteries, whereas the Chile facility used an SOE with a solar power tower and molten salt storage, transporting hydrogen in liquid form to the Netherlands. The SOE hotbox had an efficiency of 78.2% versus 57.3% for PEM, which including ancillaries dropped to 19% and 12.9% respectively. Environmentally, the PEM stack and complete facility produces double the CO2 emissions during construction in comparison of those for SOE, whilst producing 20 times higher emissions than SOE during production. The economic analysis shows more favourable results for the PEM facility with an LCOH of 9.80 €/kg versus 14.23 €/kg for SOE. The price for SOE is largely due to the transportation requirements of hydrogen via shipping, which is almost as much as the entire operational costs of the PEM facility. The overall results show that the SOE facility is technically and environmentally more promising but is compromised by its logistical requirements. It is recommended to search for potential locations within pipeline reach to the Netherlands and combining SOE with existing industrial processes so it could be used in the Netherlands without compromising its higher technical potential.