Techno-economic assessment of physical-based hydrogen storage technologies: An efficient refrigeration management

The physical-based storage of hydrogen as compressed gas or as a liquid has many advantages over material-based methods that may require advanced storage materials, different charge/discharge rates, etc. However, its high-energy demand is an important issue that should be addressed. The aim of this work is to evaluate the techno-economic process performance indices such as energy density and Specific Energy Consumption (SEC) of Cryogenic Compressed H2 (CCH2) over conventional Liquid H2 (LH2), and Compressed Gas H2 (CGH2) storage at convenient state conditions. The result infers that at CCH2 storage conditions, higher hydrogen density (≈ 90 kg/m3 ) was obtained at 53 K and 700 bar with SEC value of 39 kW/kg. While for LH2 ≈ 66 kg/m3 at 3 bar and 20 K with a SEC of 45 kW/kg, and CGH2 ≈ 40.5 kg/m3 at 700 bar and 300 K with SEC of 35.5 kJ/kg.s. The hydrogen storage densities could be doubled from 40kg/m3 at 700 bar and 300 K using CGH2 to 80 kg/m3 at ≈38K using CCH2, but with only 300 bar. Hence, these optimal points could be viable options for the demands of different applications: hydrogen-refueling stations, distribution networks and transport for long distance, with a certain tradeoff between SEC and energy density.