Economic Analysis of Hydrogen Purification Technology by Metal Hydride Separation for By-product Hydrogen

During the current important stage of implementing the "dual carbon" target, the importance of hydrogen energy is constantly increasing. In response to the current large stock of cheap industrial by-product hydrogen and the increasing demand for high-purity hydrogen in the market, the purification of industrial by-product hydrogen to produce high-purity (over 99.999%) hydrogen is currently in the pilot demonstration stage. The cost of hydrogen production is the key to its competitiveness in the high-purity hydrogen production market. A novel metal hydride purification hydrogen production levelized cost of hydrogen production model (LCOHP) is established in this work, to quantitatively analyze an industrial by-product hydrogen purification hydrogen production system with a processing capacity of 2000 Nm³/h. Moreover, the main factors affecting the LCOHP value are discussed. The results show that the LCOHP of the metal hydride purification hydrogen production system is 1.013 yuan/Nm³, among them, the cost of feed gas accounts for the highest proportion (78.45%). The system hydrogen recovery rate, industrial by-product hydrogen price, and hydrogen storage material regeneration cost have a significant impact on LCOHP. For every 5% increase in hydrogen recovery rate, the LCOHP value decreases by 0.012~0.042 yuan/standard cubic meter, a decrease of 1.18% to 4.15%. For every 0.05 yuan/standard cubic meter increase in the price of industrial by-product hydrogen, the LCOHP value increases by 0.101 yuan/standard cubic meter, an increase of 9.97%. For every 10% reduction in the cost of hydrogen storage material regeneration, the LCOHP decreases by 0.033 yuan/standard cubic meter, a decrease of approximately 3.26%.