Techno-economic Analysis of Electrified Biogas Reforming

Abstract

The world annual hydrogen demand continues to increase with a direct impact on the global CO2 emissions. A potential solution is the production of CO2-neutral hydrogen (green hydrogen) using renewable resources. In addition to electrolytic hydrogen, biogenic hydrogen can increase productivity and enable the expansion of the H2 economy for regions with low availability of solar and wind, such as central Europe. In this work, the design of a decentralized biogas-to-hydrogen process (50 Nm3 h-1 H2 productivity) based on an electrically heated reformer was developed. An economic analysis has established the viability of this suggested production route: the Hydrogen production price remains below 6 € kg-1. It results that this innovative process requires approximately 0.6 Nm3 of biogas and 1.25 kWh of renewable electricity to produce 1 Nm3 of hydrogen.