Life cycle energy consumption and GHG emissions of biomass-to-hydrogen process in comparison with coal-to-hydrogen process

Guoxuan Li, Peizhe Cui, Yinglong Wang, Zhiqiang Liu, Zhaoyou Zhu and Sheng Yang

Energy, 2020, vol. 191, issue C

Abstract: Developing coal-to-hydrogen (CTH) process is a major way to relieve the conflict between hydrogen supply and demand. The environmental problems caused by the utilization of fossil energy have driven the progress of alternative hydrogen production processes. Biomass energy, as an attractive renewable hydrogen resource, can solve some environmental problems. In this study, CTH and biomass-to-hydrogen (BTH) processes are modeled and studied. Based on the simulation results, the life cycle analysis energy consumption (EC) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of CTH and BTH processes are performed. The system life cycle boundary includes raw material production (or collection); transportation; synthesis gas generation; hydrogen purification; hydrogen transportation and application. The results show that the EC of the BTH process is 75.4% lower than the corresponding value of CTH process. GHG emissions of BTH process are 89.6% lower than corresponding values of CTH process. In addition, sensitivity analysis shows that pipeline transport is the most environmentally friendly transport mode. Gasification temperature is in the range of 1400–1500 °C, the system achieves the highest energy efficiency and the lowest GHG emissions. Suggestions were proposed for the policy formulation of the sustainable development of the hydrogen industry, which is of great significance to reduce GHG emissions and improve energy efficiency.

Keywords: Life cycle assessment; Hydrogen production; GHG emissions; Energy consumption; Environmental impact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544219322832
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:191:y:2020:i:c:s0360544219322832

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2019.116588

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().