Modeling and performance analysis of liquid hydrogen bunkering infrastructures for truck-to-ship, port-to-ship and ship-to-ship applications

Liquid hydrogen could play a promising role in long-distance and elevated-volume fuel transportation. In this context, this paper investigates liquid hydrogen transfer in bunkering applications, by means of dynamic and multi-physics modeling. The system is based on integral and differential equations, taking into account the main phenomena that occur in two-phase tanks, considering heat and mass change processes, hydrogen liquid and gas pipelines, including liquid and boil-off gas transfer, and control systems, based on valve operations to maintain safe conditions. After model validation, three representative bunkering configurations, namely truck-to-ship, port-to-ship and ship-to-ship, are analyzed considering different infrastructure sizes and operating conditions. By evaluating the transient evolution of pressure, temperature and volume, the predicted bunkering duration for the investigated case studies ranges from 40 to 145 min, while the receiver tank state of charge varies between 4.5% and 85%. Furthermore, the ship-to-ship configuration requires venting approximately 1225 kg of boil-off gas to maintain safe operating conditions.