Green hydrogen project downstream how to consume

At present, the downstream consumption of hydrogen mainly covers four fields: chemical industry, transportation, power generation and construction, of which chemical industry is the main field. The chemical industry has the largest demand for hydrogen, which is mainly used to produce chemicals such as ammonia and methanol, to act as a reducing agent in metallurgy, to improve steel properties, and to desulfurization, denitrification, and hydrogenation in oil refining. With the continuous improvement of global environmental awareness, the application of hydrogen in transportation, power generation and construction is also gradually increasing.

In the field of transportation, hydrogen is used as an energy source for fuel cell vehicles and can achieve zero emissions, so it is considered to be one of the directions of future automotive development.

In the field of power generation, hydrogen is used as a clean energy source, which can be generated by combustion or fuel cells.

In the construction sector, hydrogen is used for heating, which can be generated by reacting with oxygen to generate heat energy and achieve clean energy heating.

In response to the dual-carbon goal, while the cost of wind power generation has declined to promote the development of green hydrogen, green hydrogen to gray hydrogen/blue hydrogen replacement is an imperative direction in the future. From the perspective of the future space, green hydrogen is mainly consumed locally in the scenery base in the short term, the main application scenario is synthesis of ammonia to produce fertilizer and synthesis of methanol, in the medium term, it can realize the replacement of gray hydrogen/blue hydrogen for chemical industry in other regions of China, and there is also alternative space for hydrogen for transportation and oil refining. And the application of hydrogen energy storage in power grid peak regulation is expected to provide a larger increment.

The chemical industry is the most widely used and economical application scenario of green hydrogen. In China's hydrogen utilization structure in 2020, hydrogen for synthetic ammonia and methanol accounted for 32% and 27%, respectively. At present, ammonia synthesis is the most important way to consume green hydrogen. According to statistics, among the new green hydrogen projects in 2022-2023, as of April 2023, more than 19GW of green hydrogen projects are under construction and planned, of which 58% of green hydrogen projects are synthetic ammonia projects, and more than 80% of the capacity supporting synthetic ammonia devices are used as downstream hydrogen scenarios. The production of methanol from green hydrogen coupled carbon capture is also a potential application scenario in the chemical industry, but the production of methanol from green hydrogen is not economical at present.

The average space distance between upstream production and downstream demand of green hydrogen in China is large. At the end of green hydrogen production, China's northwest is rich in scenic resources, and large new energy bases are mainly concentrated in Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Gansu and other places. The layout of chemical bases such as synthetic ammonia and methanol shows the location characteristics of coal and coke furnace gas resources, while the downstream of synthetic ammonia - fertilizer industry is close to important agricultural production areas, concentrated in East, North and central China.

The storage and transportation form and cost of green hydrogen will have a great impact on the industrial chain. Among green hydrogen and downstream synthetic ammonia, methanol, fertilizer and other products, hydrogen has the highest transportation cost.

// Hydrogen

The transportation of hydrogen requires pipeline transportation, compressed gas tanker or liquid hydrogen transport tanker, etc., must meet the conditions of low temperature and high pressure, and take special measures. According to "Analysis of hydrogen-ammonia Storage and Transportation Technology and Economy under the Background of" Dual Carbon "(Wu Quan, Shen Yuxin, Yu Lei et al., Oil & Gas and New Energy, 2022, 34(5)), the transportation cost of liquid hydrogen pipeline is 0.195 yuan /kwh/2000km under the optimistic estimate of 8400 hours of annual full power utilization. If the conservative estimate of utilization hours is 4200 hours, the transportation cost will reach 0.390 yuan /kwh/2000km;

// Liquid ammonia

The transportation cost of liquid ammonia is much lower than that of liquid hydrogen. Although ammonia is a gas at normal temperature, it is easier to liquefy than hydrogen, and it only needs 1Mpa pressure to liquefy at normal temperature. According to Analysis of hydrogen-ammonia Storage and Transportation Technology and Economy under the Background of "Dual carbon" (Wu Quan, Shen Yuxin, Yu Lei et al., Oil & Gas and New Energy, 2022,34 (5)), the pipeline transportation cost of liquid ammonia is 0.04 yuan /kwh/2000km. According to data provided by the IEA, the shipping cost of liquid ammonia is 0.06 yuan /kwh/2000km.

// Methanol

The transportation of methanol is similar to liquid ammonia, and it is a liquid at room temperature and can be directly canned. According to Mohammed Al-Breiki, Yusuf Bicer in Comparative cost assessment of sustainable energy carriers produced from natural gas accounting for According to the calculation in "boil-off gas and social cost of carbon" (Energy Reports, Volume 6, 2020, 1897-1909), the shipping cost of methanol is 0.04 yuan /kwh/2000km. Slightly lower than liquid ammonia.

// Chemical fertilizer

Chemical fertilizer is solid at room temperature and is suitable for conventional transportation. At present, the single ton cost of railway transportation fertilizer is 173.7 yuan /t/2000km, the single ton cost of road transportation fertilizer is 250 yuan /t/2000km, and the single ton cost of ship transportation is 80 yuan /t/2000km.

Therefore, before the breakthrough of hydrogen storage and transportation technology, direct storage and transportation of hydrogen will lead to a significant increase in the cost of the industrial chain, and the mainstream of green hydrogen consumption will be to complete the industrial process of synthetic ammonia, fertilizer and methanol in Inner Mongolia, and then circulate to other regional markets in China.

Source:https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/RBLKPD3s-vo0Gf3RXqgMiA