Sustainability Assessment of Gaseous and Liquid Hydrogen Production Processes

• Published in: 2023 10th IEEE International Conference on Power Systems (ICPS) pp. 1 - 6
• Main Authors: Rana, Md Zweel, Ali, Md Osman, Parvez Mahmud, M A
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 13.12.2023
• Subjects: Ecosystems; environmental impact; Fuels; gaseous hydrogen; Global warming; Hydrogen; Life cycle assessment; liquid hydrogen; Liquids; Production; renewable energy; Water resources
• ISSN: 2691-0233
• DOI: 10.1109/ICPS60393.2023.10428802

Hydrogen is recognized as an emerging power generation fuel for the future since it emits significantly less amount of environmental impact compared with other conventional fossil fuels, such as natural gas and coal. Therefore, hydrogen fuel has attracted significant attention in its both gaseous and liquid state. However, these states have comparable impacts in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, human health, ecosystems, and resources. To the best of our knowledge, no work has been done to analyze the effects of gaseous hydrogen (GH) and liquid hydrogen (LH) states. This study has compared the environmental impact of GH and LH production processes. The life-cycle assessment is simulated in the environmental software SimaPro, version 9.5.0.1, using the ecoinvent 3 database applying ReCiPe 2016, Ecological scarcity 2021, IPCC 2021 GWP500, and Environmental Footprint 3.1 methods. Using the ReCiPe method GH and LHs' environmental impacts are analyzed based on global warming, ozone formation, stratospheric ozone depletion, and ecotoxicity categories. It is observed that LH is more environment-friendly than GH in terms of human health, ecosystems, and resources achieving an impact score of 65%, 70%, and 42%, respectively when the maximum impact scores of corresponding GH parameters are set 100% for comparison. Energy resources, Global Warming, water pollutants and other impact categories are assessed for both GH and LH using the Ecological Scarcity 2021 method and GH has more impact than LH. Global Warming Potential for 500 years including CO 2 uptake measure using IPCC2021 GWP500 method and 27 environmental impact categories analyzed using Environmental Footprint 3.1 method. Moreover, GH has more environmental impact than LH in all impact categories except for ionizing radiation, freshwater ecotoxicity, and water consumption.