A Systems Approach to Onsite Hydrogen Production: Investigating the Cost-Effectiveness and Potential of the Si+ Route

The widespread adoption of hydrogen as a versatile energy carrier has sparked global interest in its potential to lead a sustainable energy transition. However, the path to realizing this potential is hampered by significant challenges and barriers, particularly related to infrastructure development and its associated costs. Existing literature suggests that the energy-intensive nature of traditional hydrogen production methods, such as blue and grey routes, which involve steam methane reforming with and without carbon capture and storage, pose a major obstacle. Technological limitations in green hydrogen generation, where water molecules are split using renewable energy sources, further compound the issue. Additionally, the logistical complexities including the risks in hydrogen storage and transportation present a critical hurdle in the widespread adoption especially increasing the cost burden making the technologies less feasible and complex to implement.

Addressing these challenges presents a critical opportunity for innovative research and development especially in the hydrogen production routes. Adopting to a systems thinking approach, we hypothesize that onsite hydrogen production with the raw materials desired for hydrogen production being shipped from various locations (including the shipments across the continents) to onsite where the hydrogen production happens, rather than centralized production and distribution, could help unlock the true potential of hydrogen as a clean, versatile, and cost-effective energy carrier. Based on our hypothesis with the industrial partners collaboration we propose the novel hydrogen production technology, termed the Si+ route, as a potential solution to overcome the limitations of existing methods, even the risk and other issues arise during hydrogen storage and transportation.

In this study we investigate the costs of onsite hydrogen production through Si+ route (via Techno-Economic Analysis) and compared with the traditional blue and grey hydrogen and green hydrogen alternatives. Multiple case studies with a daily hydrogen production capacity of 100 kg were developed and simulated under two scenarios of Si+ (virgin and recycled) from an Industry standpoint of view where the raw materials (including the Si+) will be shipped from Australia to Japan, China to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia to Japan, Saudi Arabia to Japan, China to Berlin, China to Scotland, and within China. Production system settings and infrastructure requirements are based on the synthesis of business, hydrogen usage application (for instance fuel in vehicles, electricity). We analyzed Si+ route results in comparison with the blue, green, grey alternatives; results reveal that Si+ route has the strong potential in terms of cost-competitiveness with the alternatives and observed to be the risk-free route irrespective of the geographic boundary. However, cost variations between the two scenarios of Si+ reveals crucial information highlighting the key hotspots in infrastructure development, sourcing of materials, and the influence of system integration factors mainly from an application point of view. This informs that unlike traditional approaches for hydrogen production and use, the Si+ route gives that flexibility of onsite hydrogen generation that can significantly improve the efficiency, cost-competitiveness, and even the scalability, ultimately showing a potential for a more sustainable energy landscape by reducing the operational costs.