Comparative feasibility studies of H2 supply scenarios for methanol as a carbon-neutral H2 carrier at various scales and distances

Hydrogen (H2) energy has come to the fore as a significant role of chemical industry in achieving a sustainable energy sector under serious environmental problems. Therefore, research for using H2 as an energy carrier has been actively conducted. However, H2 has very low volumetric energy density making it require conversion to other forms to acquire higher volumetric energy density. In this paper, the promising compound methanol (MeOH) was considered as a H2 carrier owing to carbon-neutral in environmental terms. The two main overall H2 supply scenarios were considered. The first case covers the use of MeOH produced from various types of H2 (from steam methane reforming (SMR), coal gasification (CG), and water electrolysis (WE)), indirectly, and CO2 electrolysis, directly, as a H2 carrier, further converted to H2 at desired locations. The second case covers the conversion of MeOH from four production pathways into H2 followed by the transportation of the produced H2 via various H2 transportation methods such as compressed H2 (CH2), liquefied H2 (LH2), liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC), and ammonia (NH3). In this work, diverse H2 supply scenarios considering various MeOH production methods, capacities, pathways, and distances were analyzed with unit H2 supply cost via economic analysis.