Analysis of a novel hydrogen liquefaction process based on a mixed refrigerant Brayton cryogenic cycle utilizing LNG cooling: energy, exergy, economy and environment

Rui Zhang, Xuewen Cao, Dexin Ai, Jichao Zhu, Weihua Cai and Jiang Bian

Energy, 2025, vol. 336, issue C

Abstract: The hydrogen liquefaction process (HLP) is crucial for promoting the development of hydrogen, yet it is currently constrained by high energy consumption and low efficiency. This research introduces an innovative conceptual HLP based on a mixed refrigerant (MR) Brayton refrigeration cycle utilizing liquefied natural gas (LNG) cold energy for precooling. The cold energy released during LNG gasification is not only used for hydrogen precooling and coupled with a binary organic Rankine cycle (ORC) for power generation but also employed to balance the self-precooling heat load of the cryogenic refrigerant. The unique thermodynamic properties of hydrogen are fully considered in the simulation. Targeted analyses encompassing energy, exergy, economic, and environmental aspects are performed on the HLP. The results indicate that the new HLP exhibits high energy efficiency, with a specific energy consumption (SEC) of 4.150 kWh/kgLH2, an exergy efficiency (EXE) of 47.82 %, and a coefficient of performance (COP) of 0.2859. In addition, the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are reduced by 37.03 % compared with those of the base reference process. This study achieves resource coupling utilization and energy conservation while reducing emissions, contributing to the improvement and optimization of practical engineering projects.

Keywords: Hydrogen liquefaction process; Process integration; LNG cold energy; Mixed refrigerant Brayton cycle; Energy-exergy analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544225040666
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:336:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225040666

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.138424

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 ().